YukiOnna
by SleeplessMan
Summary: Quinn and the former Fashion Club are trapped by a blizzard, where they must face a supernatural horror, as well as themselves.
1. Default Chapter

**Part One**

Sandi slowed her car down as the falling snow worsened. Her cars headlights bounced back at her and the other ex Fashion Club members. Quinn, next to Sandi in the front seat, squinted ahead. "Maybe we shouldn't have gone to that Christmas sale today, at the Millennium Mall," she said uneasily.

Sandi shrugged "Quinn, what were the chances of the weatherman actually being right for once?", her deep drawl tense with unease. Stacy spoke up from the back seat, where she and Tiffany had been exploring their purchases," Besides, Quinn this was your idea, and you brought as many presents as the rest of us together! Are you sure you won't get into trouble for all this?"

Quinn shrugged and smiled, "No, this is all my own money, from my hostess job. Daria is coming home, for her first college Christmas, and I want everything to be just right, when she shows up Christmas Eve."

Sandi chuckled, "At least you have a sister! I'd trade you my two bratty brothers in a flash, for a smart sister like her!" Quinn made a sour face. "Gee, no thanks, Sandi! I don't know how you can stand those two! But seriously, maybe you and they should make more of an effort to get together, like Daria and I did! It is Christmas, you know, the time for miracles and forgiving."

Sandi sighed deeply. "I loved those two very much, when they were first born. I even helped change their diapers, believe it or not! But Mom got so harsh, there, and Dad just faded into the background, and, uh, you know?"

Quinn sat back and sighed inwardly. She was perfectly aware that Sandi had been scared of herself and Daria for the longest time, which was why she had played all those games with the Fashion Club leadership. But Stacy had brought the whole conflict to a head at last falls graduation, and the Club had fallen apart. The four girls were just discovering that they were friends, though it was hard to tell with Tiffany sometimes. Sandi was so insecure and defensive, though she was really trying to be nicer to people. Stacy was more outgoing now, and even Tiffany would come up with a remark or observation that surprised the others, sometimes.

Sandi slowed the convertible down even more, the car barely crawling on the snow-packed highway. The tall brunette was very tense, and the other girls caught it.

"Sandi, maybe you should stop, now, it looks really bad out there," Tiffany said, in her precise careful English. ."I know it is, Tiffany, but I'm afraid if I stop now, we won't get going again,"Sandi replied. Quinn stayed quiet, as it had been her idea to take this county road, when the state police had closed the interstate highway. The heavy snow had jammed their cell phones as well. The girls could barely see through the snow the thick forest they were driving through.

Sandi slowed the car down to first gear, the convertible barely moving as it crept through the blowing snow. Suddenly, the sound of snow crunching under their wheels changed, as the car left the pavement, and met snow covered grass. Sandi cautiously applied her brakes, and the car came to a stop. She had run off the road, and was powerless to see anything.

Tightlipped, Sandi spoke, "Would everybody try their cell phones again, please? I can't even see the front of the car, now." Quinn, Stacy, and Tiffany all reported their failures. Stacy chirped up, "Sorry, still no signal. "Quinn said, "We ought to be okay. I've read that it really doesn't get too cold during snowstorms. Besides, we can huddle together to keep warm, and we're right next to the road."

Tiffany spoke up from the back seat, "Gee, Quinn, since you're so smart, maybe you should be the President of the Fashion Club!" The other three girls all twisted around, hearing Sandi's trademark putdown to Quinn, only to see a hesitant smile appear on Tiffany's face. Stacy started to giggle, Quinn and Sandi staring at her, then started laughing themselves, the tension from the storm easing out of the car with the laughter, as the snow continued to fall.

**Part Two**

Tiffany slowly woke up, yawning, She and Stacy had fallen asleep, huddled together, like Quinn and Sandi had in the front seat. She was cold, shivering. The car windows were covered over with frost. Carefully untangling herself from the softly breathing Stacy, Tiffany rubbed a hole in the frost covered window and peered out. Snow still fell steadily outside, and the wind vibrated the convertibles canvas roof. She didn't want to leave the car, cold as it was, but her bladder didn't want to wait. She was really embarrassed, but she would have to wake one of the two girls in the front seat, to get out one of the doors. She leaned forward, and shook Quinn's shoulder, gently. "Hrm?, oh, Tiffany, ah, what's up?" Quinn yawned, barely awake.

"Quinn, I really need to go outside, now, to use the bathroom!"

'Oh, right, sorry, just a minute, okay?"

Quinn scooted over, and let Tiffany push her seat back forward, letting her open the door and step outside. Stacy grumbled sleepily from the back, and Sandi tried to burrow into Quinn like she was a blanket. Quinn suppressed a small "eep!" when one of Sandi's cold hands somehow find its way onto her belly. She carefully pulled it away, and pulled Sandi's bare hands into her lap, covering them with her own. Sandi's sleeping face smiled. "Nobody is ever going to believe this, and I am never going to tell them anyway!" Quinn thought.

Tiffany walked carefully away from the car, wading through the deepening snow towards a clump of trees. Once out of the wind, the snow wasn't so bad, and she hurriedly did her business. As she walked back through the trees, the gentle sound of the wind blowing through the pine boughs sounded very peaceful. Suddenly, she stopped, puzzled. She could just barely hear something, like a woman singing softly. She turned her head slowly, trying to catch the sound again. She couldn't make out the words, but it had sounded Asian.

Suddenly she saw a dim light away from the road, deeper in the trees. It seemed to swing with the blowing wind. She slowly approached the light, and discovered it was a lantern, hanging on a post in front of a small, weather worn cabin. The wind rocked the lantern back and forth. Tiffany was Vietnamese, but she recognized the light as a Japanese paper lantern. The shutters were closed tight. The house seemed to thrust itself out of the snow. It was single story, with grey wooden planks that had long ago lost whatever paint had been on them. The scene was so dismal, she decided to return to the car at once. She hated turning her back on the house, feeling like it was creeping through the trees after her..She couldn't stop glancing at it, over her shoulder.

The wind roared and pulled at her as she left the shelter of the trees. She stumbled through the deep snow almost blindly. She finally banged into the car, and hurriedly climbed into the back seat, shivering from the cold. Tiffany's teeth chattered as she tried to warm back up in the close to freezing interior of the car. She was still shaken by her strange revulsion to the cabin she had seen. "Thanks, Quinn," she said.

Stacy and Sandi had both been awaken by Tiffany's entrance. Stacy said, "Tiffany, you're white as a sheet, and you're freezing! Are you alright?" Tiffany said, "I'm okay, it's just so cold out there, and I got scared." Sandi and Quinn both turned around, Tiffany and Stacy huddled together, Stacy's arms around her. "Are you okay, Tiffany? What happened out there?" Sandi said sleepily. "I saw a light in the trees, and heard somebody singing,' Tiffany said, "And when I went to go see what it was, I saw a creepy little cabin in the trees. There was one of those little Japanese paper lanterns with a candle in it, out front. It really scared me, for some reason. I know it sounds silly, now."

"Well, silly or not, it's much too cold to stay any longer in this car, " Sandi said. "We're all freezing in here. Let's go knock on the door, and maybe they'll let us stand by their heater, and they might have a telephone we can call home with." Tiffany, still shaken by her strange revulsion, didn't want to go, but she and the other girls collected their purses and cell phones, and she led them back through the trees to the cabin.

The paper lantern still glowed out front, swinging on it's hook. Standing by it, they could see why Tiffany had been uneasy. The cabin seem to be really worn, with only traces of white paint flaking off the walls. The shutters were fastened shut on the small windows, two of which flanked the front door. They didn't see a car or garage, though an opening in the trees suggested a driveway. The wind sighing through the trees suddenly seemed less peaceful. Then they all started to shiver again, and Sandi said,"We've got to get inside, away from this cold!" The girls crunched through the snow to the front door, and Quinn banged with a gloved fist on the thick wood. To her surprise, the door slowly swung open.

**Part Three**

"Linda, This is Helen, yes, I know it's after 11 PM! I just wanted to know if you had heard from Sandi? Quinn hasn't called me yet, and I'm getting worried. Had you heard the highway had been closed? You hadn't, and Sandi hasn't called you either? Have you called her? Yes, I'll wait while you do." Helen Morgendorffer strummed her fingers on the arm of her living room couch as she waited for Sandi's mother to call her back. The heavy snowfall had her worried about her youngest daughter Quinn. She had almost said "no" to the shopping trip, but Quinn had been so excited about seeing Daria home from college, that she had given in. Quinn had matured so much in the last year. She was slowly turning from a fashion obsessed airhead who twisted boys around her little finger, to a mature young woman, who was slowly improving her grades in school, and thinking seriously about the future. Helen had to admit that she was proud of her. Even her friends in the former Fashion Club had changed, though not to Quinn's degree, Stacy was studying hard, and no longer let people walk all over her(well, at least some of the time). Helen had always had a cool relationship with Sandi's mother, Linda, but the past several months had seen Sandi loosen up, to become a bit more open and considerate of others. Even Tiffany had opened up, to the point of smiling shyly, though she still talked so slowly and carefully.

The phone rang, and Helen picked it up."Linda? Yes, you can't reach Sandi either? And it gives you that can't be reached message? Yes, I'd already called Tiffany's and Stacy's mothers, and they couldn't reach them, either." She didn't say she had deliberately avoided calling Linda. "Yes, but even if they had decided to spend the night there, they would at least call home, and tell us not to worry! I really think we should call the state police, and have them look out for them, at least. Do you know Sandi's license number? Wait, let me write that down, okay, I've got it. Yes, I'll call both the state and Lawndale police. Yes, if I hear anything, I'll call you right away. Thanks again." Helen hung up the phone, frowning. Linda had sounded shocked at the time, so she must have not noticed. Jake was out of town on business, and Daria was still at college in Boston. Sighing, Helen picked up the phone and started to dial.

Her home had never felt so quiet and empty..

**Part Four**

_She had risen from the ground with the first snow, exulting in the fall of the white flakes, the frigid winds which lashed the land.. She still felt her hunger, her pain, but it was lessened. She danced lightly above the snow through the trees, leaving no tracks, her white kimono swirling around her slender body, her long, lean legs. Her long black hair swirled around her face, poured down her back. Her pale, almost transparent skin reflected the glitter of the snow. Only during a storm of snow and ice did she feel truly free. Suddenly she froze, smelling something. The black pits which were her eyes widened. Her inhuman beauty thinned and she swirled away toward the old road, and the cabin which had once been her home. A machine was buried in the snow, she swirled around it in curiosity. She scented a trail, and followed it through the trees to the old cabin. Her pale light burned in front of it, as it always did, attracting the curious and unwary. She remembered her last feast there._

**Part Five**

Quinn froze as the door swung open, it's rusty hinges squealing. A gaping pit of darkness loomed before them. A gust of wind sent a streamer of snow across the rough wooden floorimmediately in front of them. Stacy quavered, "Hello? Is anybody home?" Her trembling voice ending in almost a squeak. They only thing they heard was the wind howling through the trees behind them, and the sigh of snow blowing across the ground. Quinn stepped to the doorway and looked inside, but could still see nothing. Sandi gulped," Ah, Stacy? Doesn't your key ring have a little flashlight on it?"

"Yes, Sandi."

The girls stood there shivering another minute before Stacy blushed, and dug it out of her purse, handing it to Quinn. The little light showed Quinn a one room cabin, with what looked like a barrel with a stovepipe running from it to the ceiling in the center of the room. The only furniture in it was two heavy benches, a small table, and a bunk bed against the wall. There was a small pile of wood next to the barrel. There was no sign anybody had been there for some time. The sound of the three girls behind her teeth chattering brought her back to their current predicament. "It's okay, there's nobody here, come inside!"

The rest of the former Fashion Club walked slowly inside in relief. It was cold inside the cabin, but at least out of the wind. Sandi sighed in mingled relief and frustration, "Well, at least we're out of the wind, but I wish somebody had been here who could have helped us." Stacy, her teeth still chattering, said, "If I had known we're were going to go hiking in the snow, I'd have worn different shoes, and my coat. This is going to ruin my shoes, and this jacket is too thin." Tiffany blinked, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. The girls had all dressed lightly, expecting only an all day shopping trip. Their casual shoes had been soaked in the snow, and the legs of their slacks had been soaked as well.

Meanwhile, Quinn was using the small flashlight to look around the room. The barrel was an old one, that somebody had turned into a stove, sitting on bricks above the floor. There was a stack of old newspapers next to the back door. She remembered the counselor back at Camp Grizzly trying to teach the campers how to start a fire, but she and her friends had been gossiping, and she could barely remember anything but the frustration on his face, as he gave up on the chattering girls and stalked away.

While Stacy and Sandi complained about their clothes, Tiffany hesitated a minute, then started to help Quinn search the walls and floor of the old cabin. Sandi turned to say something to Tiffany, and saw her on her hands and knees, carefully looking over the floor. She and Stacy grew silent, looked at each other, then quietly joined in.

It was Stacy who found the wooden match under the old bunk bed. She pulled her dusty hand and arm out with a gasp of triumph. "Look! I found a match!" The other girls all clustered around her in excitement. "Great, Stacy," Quinn said,"Now we can start a fire ,and warm up!"

"Ah, Quinn, have you ever started a fire with wood and things before?"

"No, Sandi, I haven't, has anybody here?"

The girls all looked at each other.

Stacy said, "Well paper burns, and there's some paper by the back door. Maybe we could use some of that to help start it?"

Sandi said excitedly, "Yes, that's it! And we put some little pieces of wood on that, and some bigger pieces on that! I used to help my Dad light up the old fireplace, and that's how he started a fire." Her face saddened. "And then I'd sit on his lap, and he would put his arms around me, and I'd feel so safe and loved.." Her voice trailed off. She hugged herself and turned away from the others, tears glistening down her face. The other three girls grew silent, unsure of what to say. They had never seen Sandi cry before.

. Sandi had very seldom said anything about her life before her two brothers had been born, when she had been the only child. Sandi, still facing away from the others, shook her head, brushed the hair out of her face. "I'll be okay, go ahead, see if you can get the fire started." She added very quietly, in almost a whisper so low the others barely caught it. "Please."


	2. Chapter two part six

**Part Six**

Stacy leaned into Quinn and whispered"not now" as Quinn looked in confusion at Sandi. The redhead shook her head in bafflement, and focused on the job at hand. Her memories of her own dad, Jake, lighting a grill involved lots of starter fluid, and sometimes a small explosion, followed by muted profanity, and her mother, Helen, sighing in exasperation and dumping a pitcher of Lemonade on him(of course, with a smirking Daria in the background). Tiffany tore several newspapers into shreds, and Quinn placed them carefully into the bottom of the old stove, with several dry sticks on top of them. Then she carefully scratched the old match against the rough sides of the old barrel, and the three girls held their breath as a spark appeared, and then caught, slowly eating its way up the wood. Not daring to breathe, Quinn touched it into the shredded papers. The flame, dimmed, then caught, the dry papers flaring up, briefly engulfing the sticks, then died down momentarily, before the sticks caught the flame. Stacy nervously passed her the smallest sticks she could find, and Quinn sighed with relief as the flames grew higher. The three teens smiled at each other, holding out their shaking hands to the slight warmth.

While Stacy and Tiffany just soaked up the heat, Quinn glanced at the small stack of wood in the cabin, knowing it probably wouldn't last too long. It would be hard to find wood in the deep snow outside, and what they did find would probably be wet. Surely it wouldn't take that long to be found, and maybe they could get a call out when the weather cleared. Tiffany sighed in relief."Thanks, Quinn, it was so cold," her normal slow speech even slower in her stress.

Sandi slowly moved to the fire, kneeling, her hands stretched out to it. Her face seemed to be almost a mask. She said, "Like, thanks, Quinn, Stacy, Tiffany. You guys are the greatest," before she started shivering badly. Quinn frowned, "Are, you okay, Sandi?"

"I'll be, uh, okay, it's just that I don't seem to be taking the, like, y'know, snow and cold too well right now," Sandi said hoarsely, smiling at her former rival, still shivering. Quinn replied in concern, "You just stay by the fire and dry out. Tiffany, Stacy, please help me pull the benches closer to the fire, so we don't have to sit on the floor." After they had done that, they brushed the dust off the bench, and sat gingerly down on the old wood.

Quinn checked the time on her watch, surprised to see it was already 8 am. Looking at the windows, she saw they didn't have any glass in them, probably from vandals, and that the shutters were nailed closed, She stepped to the door, and suddenly frowned. Why had it been open? And why had there been a lit lantern in front of an obviously long unused cabin?

Opening the door, she peered out. The snow still fell heavily, outside, lashed by the driving wind. The wind was cut by the trees around the cabin, though the snow was still heavy and deep. A gust of wind blew directly in her face, her long red hair blocking her vision. She brushed it back fretfully. Closing the door, she tried her phone again. Only the loss of contact signal answered her.

She crossed over to the benches, and sat down next to Sandi, who smiled wanly at her. The cold stove had heated up the inside of the cabin slightly, but it was still cool, except right next to it. Quinn glanced around. The cabin was dimly lit by firelight, leaking out around the edges of the crudely stove door. Luckily, almost all of the smoke went up the rickety tin stovepipe chimney. The air smelled musty, with a not unpleasant smell of pine smoke from the fire.

Looking up, she could see no ceiling, the room open to the inside of the roof, the bare rafters studded with nails. The walls were rough unfinished lumber. It reminded her of a cabin she had seen during a class field trip she had taken. Other than the furniture they had noticed earlier, there was nothing in the cabin. She saw Stacy walking around, trying to get a signal on her own phone.

The pigtailed brunette shook her head, sighed, and crossed over to Quinn.

"I can't get out either, Quinn,"she said. "Are you sure we'll be okay?"

A cold chill suddenly shook Quinn. She shuddered, then forced a cheerful tone into her voice. "Sure we will, Stacy! We're not that far from the highway. The cars stuck right next to the road, and somebody should be coming along any time now, a snow plow or a policeman, or even a park ranger. Things are just confused, because of this blizzard. But we're warm, we have heat, and our phones. As soon as this storm lifts, we'll just call out. Sure, this cabin is, eww, gross and smelly, and there's nothing to eat! But you know that everybody always puts on calories over Christmas, and this will be good for our figures!"

Stacy stared at her, wide eyed, then smiled and hugged her. "Thanks, I was so worried! But that was just so, I don't know, just so positive!" Sandi and Tiffany seconded her from the bench. "That was great Quinn,' Sandi said weakly, before coughing. "You sounded mu-uch better than Ms. Li does, Quinn, "Tiffany said, "And it makes me feel good too. Maybe you should be a teacher, or even a principal, or a lawyer like your mom." She added, "But you almost sounded like Brittany for a moment, there!"

At the memory of the blonde empty headed cheerleader, who squeaked at the end at each sentence, who had graduated the previous year, Quinn stuck her tongue out. "No way I'll ever be that, ugh, why she passed and her bozo boyfriend Kevin the QB didn't I'll never know!" She opened the door. "Sandi, you don't sound so good, so you stay here. Keep an eye on the fire, and if it looks like it's low, put another piece of wood in it. Tiffany, why don't you come with Stacy and me, and we'll look for some wood outside, and see if anybody has driven by."

Tiffany stood up, slipping on her shoes, and buttoning up her light jacket. The other three girls slipped out the door, leaving Sandi alone in the dimly lit cabin. It was warm next to the stove, but she felt like shivering. She glanced around seeing nothing, but feeling like somebody was staring at her. Her hands clenched together tightly, her teeth chattering. Her slender shoulders shook as she silently sobbed, terrified of being alone, but unable to leave.


	3. Chapter Three

The three girls stood still for a moment outside the battered old cabin. Large drifts of snow surrounded them like prison fences. Even here in the shelter of the trees, stray currents from the blizzard blasted them. Swirls of snow danced along the tops of the encircling drifts. The sun was still hidden behind the clouds, only dimly lighting the landscape. The white clouds of their breath were tattered by the fierce gusts.

The leafless branches of the trees whipped back and forth, clawing at the intensely cold air. The harsh contrast of white snow and the grey bark of the trees made an eerie contrast to their blinking eyes. Their hair was teased by the wind, blowing into their faces by the swirling air.

Quinn blinked, leaned toward the other two and said, "We'd better not waste any time out here! Stay right with me, and let me know if you see anything!"

They crunched through the snow to the back of the cabin. A small mound next to the back door revealed another small pile of wood, though it was frozen into a solid chunk. A snow covered barrel was used to burn trash, though it seemed empty now, filled with the blowing snow. The back of the cabin only had the single door, and a thin curl of smoke from the stovepipe that was ripped away by the wind.

Looking around Quinn and Stacy could see why Tiffany had been so frightened out by the place. The only colors were white and grey. The old cabin huddled in the snow as if it were slowly sinking down into the snow covered ground. The trees were thick, and completely leafless, blocking the wind.

Looking up, they couldn't even see the clouds, only the swirling snow. The light seemed to come from all around them, but not from the unseen sun, hidden behind the swirling snow. The girls

grouped together uneasily, staring around them at the harsh surroundings.

Stacy tapped Quinn on the shoulder and pointed to a dim outline in the nearby trees. Wading carefully towards it, the girls discovered a small building like a tool shed, and the unmistakable shape to even these city bred girls of a battered outhouse. Their "ewws' of dismay sounded as one, followed by their nervous laughter. Quinn gingerly opened the door, to discover the inside was still intact, though dusty, and filled with cobwebs and leaves.

They next checked the shed, grateful to leave the storm if only for a moment. It was dirty and dusty, with the wind blasting drifts of snow through cracks in the walls. It was filled with various pieces of junk, including broken axe handles and old car parts, as well as rags and other rubbish. Stacy spotted an old fashioned hubcap, and picked it up. To Quinn's and Tiffany's inquiring glances she just shrugged and said, "I just thought we could clean it out, and melt some snow to drink. Even as cold as it is, I'm really thirsty." Tiffany just smiled and nodded. Quinn said, "Good thinking, I'm getting thirsty myself."

Quinn picked up a rusty axe head with a big crack in it to chip apart the frozen wood by the back door. There were odds and ends of broken furniture in the shack as well, so she was reassured as to a future wood supply if needed. Bracing themselves, they marched back out into the storm.

After their brief shelter, the outside seemed even worse. They struggled toward the cabin. Tiffany tripped on something buried in the snow, falling forward with a cry of surprise. The other two girls helped her up, and arm in arm marched toward the front door of the cabin.

Quinn shouted at the others, "Should we rest now, or just try to get to the car? Tiffany, how's your leg?" "It's ok-ay, Quinn, "she replied. "I'm alright, but lets just get to the car and back inside." Stacy nodded in agreement. Still arm in arm, the pushed into the face of the blowing wind, toward what they hoped was the general direction of the car.

The thinner the trees got, however the stronger the howling wind was, until they could barely force their way forward. Just at the beginning of the clearing, their way was blocked by a huge drift of snow, higher than their heads. They stood there, braced against the wind, staring in disbelief.

They walked along the edge, hoping to find a way around it, but had no success. They looked in despair at each other. Quinn shook her head in frustration, and leaning in towards the others shouted," lets just go back to the cabin now, and we'll think of something else!" The wind pushed at their backs, so that they half ran through the lesser drifts to the cabin.

Passing the lamp post, they noticed the lantern was gone, though they didn't stop, but kept on to the door, hitting it with a loud thump. Quinn grabbed the handle and turning it, she and the others stumbled back inside. The dimly fire-lit darkness blinded them, and they stopped, breathing hard from their forced run.

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the cabin, they made out the shadowy form of Sandi, still huddled on the bench next to the fire. She was bent over, arms wrapped around herself, shivering almost violently. She hadn't even looked up at their entrance. Quinn and Stacy dropped their burdens by the door, and the girls moved uneasily to Sandi. Stacy gently reached out to touch Sandi's shoulder and said softly, "Sandi? We're back. Are you alright? What's wrong?"

Sandi jumped up with a small shriek. "I, I'm sorry, I must have fallen asleep. It's so hot in here, and I'm so thirsty and hungry, and, "her voice trailed off, looking at her concerned friends. Sandi's face was pale, her hair damp with sweat. "Quinn took off one glove, and touched her forehead. "Sandi, you're burning up with fever! Lay down on the bench. Stacy, Tiffany, put your jackets on her."

Quinn went to the door and picked up the old hubcap. Opening the door and stepping outside, she scoured it out in the snow, and scooped more snow into it into it. She opened the door and stepped back inside the cabin. Sandi was lying on the bench, covered with the other girls coats. They had sat down on the other bench, leaning toward the old stove. Quinn sat the hubcap down on top of it, waiting for the snow to melt. She laid her own jacket on Sandi's shivering form and sighed.

Sandi had already fallen asleep again. Stacy looked at Quinn, fear in her eyes, "Quinn, what are we going to do? She's really sick. We can't get to the car, and we still cant call out!"

"It'll be okay!"Quinn replied. "The Highway Dept is probably plowing the roads now, and we can try to get to the car a little later , is all. We can just keep Sandi warm, and give her plenty of water to drink. It'll be okay, I promise!"

"Quinn, this is really freaky! Who put that light out there last night, just in time for Tiffany to see? Who would even guess she would leave the car at that time? Why was the door unlocked? And who was singing last night, and attracted her attention to the cabin? I don't like this at all!" Stacy was clearly on the verge of one of her hyperventilation fits.

Quinn put her hands on Stacy's shoulders, staring directly into her eyes. "Stacy, it'll be alright! We can't fall apart. We've got to stick together to get through this. It's still early. It'll clear up outside, and we'll get some help for Sandi, and go home." Stacy stared back into Quinn's eyes, her hands clasped together in front of her, trembling, then slowly forced herself to calm down.

"I, I'm sorry, Quinn, it's just that this is spooky, and I'm worried about Sandi, and I don't like this, this dirty old place, and I, I have a d-date tonight, and I really want to go home."

"Well, lets just warm up in here a bit, and then we'll try that opening in the tree's that Tiffany thought might be a driveway, okay? It's still early in the morning, and somebody should be coming along anytime."

Stacy smiled weakly and sat down next to Tiffany, who smiled back, and started touching up her nail polish, with intense concentration. Quinn smiled and sat down next to Sandi, glancing at her friends. _I guess some things don't change, even in a situation like this!_


	4. chapter four

**Chapter Four**

Helen sat down numbly in front of her television. The night had passed in an uneasy slumber, alone in her big house. She hadn't gotten any calls from Quinn, and her own calls to her missing daughter didn't go through. The wind howled outside, banking snow up against the bricks of her home. The city of Lawndale was shut down by the storm. Early as it was, she had already dressed, though casually, since she wouldn't be going to work today. She had come down before daybreak, to drink coffee, and watch the news.

Dozens of accidents had taken place over the night, but no fatalities so far. The State Police and the Lawndale police had both put out an alert on Sandi's car, and the four missing girls, but they wouldn't officially be missing until that evening. Her early morning call had only yielded the news from exhausted dispatchers that both state and local law enforcement had their hands full with the massive, slow moving blizzard.

A lot of people had spent the night in their cars, stuck on the highway behind massive drifts, that the overworked snowplows couldn't keep up with. There had been many cases of frostbite, and the tv and radio both repeated bulletins on how to deal with it, and for people to stay home. All phone lines were overworked, power had been lost in places. Helen had thought about taking her SUV out, but the obvious futility of it, in the massive storm, had stopped her.

The mothers of the other girls had also sounded tired. Both Mrs. Rowe, and Mrs. Blum-Deckler were living in front of their own televisions. Linda Griffin had gone to work, to better monitor the news from her position as marketing vice president of the local tv station, though she hadn't sounded all that concerned. Helen still fumed at the offhand way Linda had put it, "Helen, I'm sure the girls just spent the night in the car and couldn't call home. It's not like they were lost at the North Pole. They only drove a hundred miles away, after all."

Jake was stuck in New York on his consulting job. She hadn't heard yet from Daria in Boston, but depended on her oldest daughters great common sense to wait out the storm. She had tried to call her, but the lines had been busy all night.

Restless, Helen threw herself into a frenzy of paperwork, researching her latest case. But her eyes kept turning to the tv screen, and the unending scenes of blowing snow and stalled cars. Her day passed slowly. She finally gave up, and just sat on the living room couch, idly switching from channel to channel. She walked up to Quinn's bedroom, and just stood in the doorway, looking in. Quinn's nightgown was tossed on the unmade canopied bed, the walls covered with boy band posters. Several schoolbooks were on the dresser, along with the pages of an unfinished report.

She stepped across the hallway, and looked into Daria's room. Other than making the bed, and straightening up a little, she and Jake had left it alone. Daria's posters and models were gone with her to college, as well as her computer. The walls were still covered with padding, and the stubs of sawn bars still blocked the windows. The former owners had kept their schizophrenic mother in the room, and Daria had liked it that way, mostly to annoy her parents and sister. Helen sighed in regret at not being able to bond with her brilliant, though unconventional, oldest daughter until just before her graduation.

Sadly musing that Quinn was only a few months away from graduation and leaving for college herself, Helen slowly descended the stairs. Quinn running down the stairs for one of her numerous dates, or to meet her friends in the former Fashion Club, would soon be just a memory, like Daria studying, or watching tv with her artist friend, Jane Lane. Standing by the front window, staring out at the blowing snow, a lonely mother blinked back her tears.

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Quinn brushed Sandi's damp hair from her sweat covered brow, her touch seeming to calm Sandi's shivering body. She was curled up on her side, huddled next to Quinn on the broad wooden bench. Stacy was brushing her hair, while Tiffany carefully checked her makeup in her compact mirror. Considering it was very dark inside the cabin, except for the firelight, she was doing a very good job. Quinn sighed and looked around at the inside of the old cabin, seeing nothing but what she had seen before. She had seldom felt so dirty, except for that one camping trip her family had taken in the woods.

Daria had told her that she, and her parents had all gone crazy from hallucinogenic berries her dad had picked for them for breakfast. The only thing she really remembered about the trip were vague images of being a fairy, and waking up in the hospital after she had had her stomach pumped. Daria had teased her for weeks later, hinting at things she had done, but couldn't remember. She had had mud smeared on her face, and both she and her mom had dirt and sticks in their hair.

Quinn sighed in frustration, for all their bickering, she and Daria were sisters, and she missed her. After the breakup of the Fashion Club, she and Stacy had started studying harder, and had started to pull away from Sandi and Tiffany. The other two girls tried, but both had problems keeping up academically. Still, they both tried, Sandi showing a thoughtful, considerate face she had carefully hidden for the past two years, and Tiffany a shy, subtle, sense of humor.

Quinn had known Sandi and her mother had been having some fierce arguments, but Sandi had always downplayed them. Still, this wasn't the time or place for revelations. Sandi groaned deeply, her hands clutching her belly in sudden pain, though she didn't wake up. Quinn turned and held her shoulders down so she didn't fall off the bench.

"Sandi!" Stacy blurted out as she and Tiffany hurried over. "Quinn, I thought she just had a fever! Why is she having stomach cramps, too!?"

"I don't know! I'm not a doctor! Has she been sick like this before?" Quinn shouted back in frustration.

"If she has, she never told me!" Stacy said helplessly. "Tiffany, do you know anything?" Tiffany blinked, but shook her head, her dark eyes wide in shock..

Sandi suddenly screamed out in sudden agony, fighting her friends hands as they tried to hold her down. She fell to the floor with a loud thump, arching her back, and screaming out something, before she went suddenly limp. Only her loud breathing reassured the other girls she was still alive, as they knelt around her in horror.

Quinn bit her lip in indecision at what she should do. Sandi laid before her, breathing loudly, on the dusty wooden floor. Stacy was across from her, her hands clenched to her mouth, her own breathing loud, almost spastic. Tiffany was next to her, a look of fear on her face.

"Qu-inn?" she said even more slowly than normal, "What Sandi just said..."

Quinn looked at her in confusion. "Tiffany, she didn't say anything! It was just gibberish."

Tiffany looked back at the redhead with a rare determination. "No, Qui-nn, it was-n't. It was the same words I heard, last night, before I saw the cabin.I don't know what she said, or what language it is, but it's the exact same words!"

Quinn and Stacy stared at Tiffany, as she stared back at them.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

Tiffany whispered, barely heard by Stacy and Quinn, "I think she's been like, you know, possessed, like that old movie where that girl started floating up in the air and spitting that, ewww, green stuff."

Stacy was already terrified, and stammered, "Possessed? You mean, by the Devil? Are you saying Sandi is a devil from Hell, and we're trapped here with her!?"

Tiffany considered for a second, "Well, of course she's been possessed by the Devil, I don't think angels do things like that, do they?"

Stacy let out a shriek, and scrambled to her feet, running toward the door. She fumbled for a second with the old doorknob, before dashing outside into the howling blast of the storm. Quinn had been staring at Sandi's fallen form, listening to the two girls, but not really paying attention until she heard the door slam open

Quinn shouted at the kneeling Tiffany, "Tiffany, that was just a movie! It wasn't real!"

"Oh, it wasn't?" Tiffany said.

Quinn just looked at her for a moment, then muttered "Oh, no!" before she buttoned up her jacket and ran out after her, leaving Tiffany alone with the unconscious Sandi, still kneeling on the floor besides her. The blast of wind from the door attracted her attention. She stood up slowly, walked over to the door and closed it. She briefly wondered if she should go after the other two, then decided against it, not knowing what direction they had gone in. Besides, her leg was hurting her, from her fall outside earlier.

She looked back at Sandi, still laying on the floor. Her breathing was still loud, but at least she wasn't talking in that scary voice any more. The slender Vietnamese girl worried about what she should do for her friend. She had always avoided taking the losing side in the Fashion Club conflicts, but she really did like Sandi, had always admired her take charge attitude, and liked her even more now that she was nicer."I really shouldn't leave her lying on the floor like that, but I can't pick her up by myself, "Tiffany thought to herself, "and she's getting all dirty and sweaty down there." A sudden thought struck her. "Quinn left me alone here with Sandi, so she trusted me to take care of her while she's trying to help Stacy. But what can I do by myself?" She thought for a moment and sighed. Sitting down on the dusty floor next to Sandi, she struggled to pull Sandi into her lap, wrapping her arms around the limp girl. Sandi seemed small, not the dominating figure she normally was even now. She shivered in Tiffany's arms, but slowly relaxed, her loud breathing quieting. "Ew, this is so gross!"Tiffany thought."Is this how a mom feels?"

Stacy bolted out of the cabin, not even buttoning up her jacket. The savage cold bit into her, causing a sharp gasp, her pounding heart drove her onward, Sandi's strange words eating into her. Stumbling blindly through the high drifts, her feet broke into the stiff crusts.. Her every breath was like a sharp dagger, deep in her lungs. Only her sheer stark terror of what she thought Sandi had become drove her onward. Bare leafless branches slashed at her already numb face like claws, drawing blood. Hearing a shout behind her only drove her faster, and she ran face first into the massive drift of snow trapping them in the grove of trees surrounding the cabin

She sprawled on her face, the snowbank coming down on top of her. Her arms and legs flailed on either side of her, churning the deep snow trapping her. Tiny crystals of pure ice filled her screaming mouth, choking her, her lips and tongue growing numb. Her breathing stopped. Stacy could feel her frantically beating heart slow, her hot blood chilling into an icy slush. She felt her entire body growing chill, an intense feeling of peace washing over her, easing her fear. She was safe here, hidden under the snow. The devils in Sandi couldn't find her here, all she had to do was fall quietly asleep. A brief regret flitted through her sluggish thoughts, "Oh, Sandi, I'm so sorry! You were so nice, like you were before you got so jealous of Quinn. Quinn, I wish I could have told you how great I thought you were, without scaring you this time! Tiffany, I never really understood you, but you were coming out of your shell, I only wish...." her thoughts trailed off, as the she fell quietly asleep, buried under the deep snow.

Quinn struggled through the deep snow and tangling brush.. Stacy's footprints in the drifting snow were being rapidly erased, filled in by the gusting wind.. She stumbled, her face and feet getting very numb from the searing cold.

Stacy stirred, dimly hearing Quinn's frantic shouts, and sleepily opened her eyes. At first, she couldn't see anything at all, only a blinding darkness. Then, slowly, the snow supporting and trapping her seemed to gradually fade away, and a dim light seemed to appear. She seemed to be floating in midair, looking down at the ground. The ground then seemed to fade out as well under her. She could see rocks and tree roots, seeming to be suspended in midair. Stacy's numb lips parted in a wide smile as she took in the amazing sight.

Slowly, her eyes drifted, not wondering at anything, taking it all in, in an almost childish delight. Her eyes were drawn to a cluster of white, stick-like shapes, almost seeming to glow with their own inner light. The shapes slowly grew sharper, more distinct. As she stared at them, Stacy slowly realized that these were not only bones, but human bones. They grew brighter, almost like a frozen star. With a sudden flash, they seemed to grow together, forming a body covered by a white robe.

The image was tiny, but incredibly distinct and clear. Stacy saw a young woman, with Asian features, and long, black hair. Her raw beauty took Stacy's breath away, making her feel plain, homely. She didn't seem to be any older than Stacy herself. Her skin was very pale, her lips a brilliant red, her long black hair seeming to float in a faint breeze. Her feet were bare and very small, with small, perfect toes. Stacy slowly understood that the woman was wearing a Japanese kimono, woven of an very fine white silk, it's fine folds caressed by the same wind teasing her hair.

"She is so beautiful!" Stacy thought. "More beautiful than anybody I've ever known! She's like an ange1! But the poor thing is buried out here, so far away from anybody. She must be so lonely."

The unmoving figure grew slowly in Stacy's eyes, seeming to be floating slowly toward her, until it seemed that the white robed figure was floating just beneath her. The thin kimono caressed the other woman's body, revealing slight glimpses of her porcelain perfection, her long slender legs, small high breasts. Stacy gasped at this body, so teasingly revealed. She longed to have that same perfection, to be beautiful, instead of just "pretty." A deep longing filled her aching heart.

As she stared hopelessly, she saw the ruby red lips slowly parting, revealing small, sharp, white teeth. She suddenly realized that this woman, whatever else she might be, wasn't really "dead." She waited for what she now knew was going to happen.

The pale skin over the white kimono clad woman's eyes stirred, as her eyes opened. Her large pupils seemed to fill her eyes, and Stacy felt herself falling deep into them. They floated closer and closer, until Stacy thought they could almost touch. A faint, sad smile filled the other woman's face, and their lips lightly met.

Stacy had already lost all feeling in her body. She watched in fascination, as a white mist seemed to be drawn from her motionless lips, into the other woman's throat. She waited, feeling herself as only an empty shell, soon to be filled.

The other woman then exhaled, a sparkling icy mist, that poured down Stacy's throat, filling her with a chill strength, tasting, oddly enough,.like cherries. Stacy gasped at the icy energy that filled her, and screamed, shuddering, before she passed out. Faintly, she heard the word, "Soon."

Quinn, her head down, stood despairingly in front of the bank of snow, her body shivering in the harsh wind, unable to understand in her numbness where Stacy was. Suddenly, she cocked her head, hearing a faint scream. Stacy convulsively kicked, her shoe now sticking out of the snowbank. Quinn grabbed at it, pulling Stacy out of the snow. The other girl seemed asleep, and Quinn tried to drag her, her own strength seeming to fail as she stumbled.

Stacy blinked, suddenly waking, angry at losing her dream. She looked in confusion at the exhausted, gasping Quinn, then stood up, supporting her friend back to the cabin, not wondering at her newfound strength, or sense of direction. The events of her burial rapidly faded in her mind.


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

Sandi slept, wrapped in Tiffany's sheltering arms. Tiffany tried not to flinch too much, though she was uncomfortable with Sandi's weight on her lap, and was getting cramps in her own legs and seat, on the cold wooden floor. _Sandi's sick, and I scared Stacy by talking about people being possessed, and she went running outside, and Quinn had to go chasing her. I know how nervous Stacy gets! Why did I have to remember that thing right then! Quinn's right, that was just a movie. Still, it was a really scary one, and it did seem sort of what was happening to poor Sandi._

Tiffany sighed in frustration. _I really wish I was smart, like Quinn and Stacy are. Quinn always knows the right thing to say, and the right time to say it. Stacy's doing a lot of reading, and she's getting really good at school. I know Sandi is smarter than me too, though she's having trouble studying, just like me, though not as bad. Mom always said to be careful what you say, and never try to stick out, but maybe there's something more to life. I always expected to become a model, I know I'm pretty, but what if I can't? Those modeling people that came to school never even talked to me, they picked Brittany, Sandi, and Stacy. They wanted Quinn, but she hid in the bathroom. I know Quinn's smart, did she think something was wrong with those people?_ The thought that Quinn might have inhibitions of her own never crossed Tiffany's mind. Quinn was perfect, as far as Tiffany was concerned.

Quinn's perfection was getting badly tarnished outside, if Tiffany had only been able to see. Stacy, whom she had gone running outside to rescue, pulling out from under a collapsed snowbank, was practically carrying the exhausted, red haired girl back to the sheltering cabin. Stacy's long brown hair, freed from the pigtails Stacy had put her hair in her entire life, flowed behind her in the stiff wind, crackling with static electricity, giving the normally mousy girl a wild, untamed look, which impressed Quinn as much as it frightened her.

_Stacy went running outside in a panic, I found her buried under a snowbank. And now she's carrying me back! She's so pale, I thought she was in shock. But she's not even breathing hard now! She didn't even button up her jacket, and her arm around me feels like a bar of ice! _

Quinn, peeking at Stacy out of the corner of her eyes, noticed a slow change as they got closer to the cabin. Stacy's serene expression gradually faded away, to her normal look of sweetness, now laid over with a strain of raw fatigue. Her burst of strength also faded, until the two girls were leaning on each other as much as standing erect. The last several feet to the cabin was nearly a crawl, and they opened the door and stumbled to a bench.

Th inside of the cabin, cool as it was even with the small fire, seemed like a sauna to the two girls, and they slumped down, exhausted, barely noticing the burdened Tiffany. Every muscle in Quinn's body seemed to hurt, and she was hungry enough to even eat some of her dad's rather exotic dishes, as bad as they generally were. Stacy didn't seem much better, and both girls soon slipped off the benches to the floor, where, pillowing their heads on their arms, they fell deeply asleep.

Tiffany fretted, not knowing what she should do. She carefully eased Sandi's limp form down, and dragged her as gently as possible to the other two girls, so that they were huddled together.

In the dimly lit cabin, they all looked very peaceful laying together. The fire seemed very low, so Tiffany put some more wood inside, enjoying the crackling noise it made as the flames flared up.

_This kind of heat is nice, but the light isn't too good for putting makeup on, _she thought.

Sandi moaned, and Tiffany crossed quickly over to her, setting next to her, and gently stroking her forehead, like she had seen Quinn do. Her touch seemed to calm the feverish girl. _When I was a little girl, and had nightmares, just feeling my mom next to me always made me feel safe. Sandi must be having some really bad ones now. I know she and her mom have been having some really bad fights lately, and her brothers have been really nasty to her, too, not matter how nice they are to Quinn when she's there. Quinn always seemed to fight with her sister, Daria, too, when they lived together, or at least argue a lot. But they seem to get along okay now. I always thought Daria was kind of mean. But she was really smart, even smart than Jodie._

Jodie Landon, the ex-class President, was a very attractive girl, and smart too. If she had been in the Fashion Club, there was no doubt to anybody that she would have been the leader. But Jodie had always been so busy, and nice as she was, seemed to look down on the Fashion Club with an amused contempt.

_Sandi was always closer to Stacy than she was to me. I was always taking sides, but never standing up for myself. Now Quinn and Sandi are close friends, and Stacy and Quinn seem to be good friends, too. I like them, and Sandi is a lot nicer now, but sometimes, I think they just invite me along out of habit, the four of us. When Quinn and Stacy start talking about schoolwork, or what college they want to go to, I feel so, so lost. Sandi can keep up a bit, but not me. Even if she gets all, well, defensive?, about it. When we had that tutor, that David guy, Quinn stayed right with him. Stacy got so nervous trying to study with him, but I heard later he thought Sandi and I were a waste of time. A nerdy guy like that, putting the two of us down! He even told Quinn she was too shallow for him, And Quinn is so smart._

Tiffany had seldom thought so much. Normally, she just laid back, and let things drift by, not really caring. But there wasn't any tv or radio here, and nobody else was even awake now. Quinn and Stacy were aslee_p o_n the floor, and Sandi was sick, having nightmares. Tiffany was hungry, sore, and dirty. Her long black hair felt greasy. Her face was probably dirty too, she mused. Sandi moaned again, restlessly. Tiffany noticed her lips were chapped, and carefully put Sandi's head down on one of Quinn's outstretched legs. She stood up and stretched, groaning quietly from the pain of her cramped muscles, then picked up the water filled hubcap, from next to the stove, placing it to Sandi's parched lips. Sandi sputtered a bit, then sipped the makeshift bowl dry, as Tiffany carefully tilted it up.

_At least I can help a little bit now, after scaring Stacy so bad. But why did Sandi act like that? Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, but what Sandi said was what I heard last night, that singing. It scared me too, not just Stacy. I wonder what's wrong with Sandi, anyway? First she has fever, then cramps. She seemed to be in a lot of pain too. _

Tiffany hesitated, thinking deeply(for her), then carefully placed her hand against Sandi's slacks, just below her navel, and pulled it quickly back, gasping. She had felt a point of intense cold, like touching a metal pole on the coldest day of the year. Her fingertips felt almost burned from it. And it was inside Sandi.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

Quinn shivered in her canopied bed. The mattress was so lumpy, she couldn't relax, and she couldn't find her blanket._ Daria must have snuck in my room, stolen my blankets, and put rocks under my mattress, again! Just because I drew some pictures in one of her dumb books. Wait till I tell mom!_

Quinn yawned, her stiff fingers pulling up the sheets, which made a strange crackling noise. Her pillow felt hard and flat, too. _Wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense, Daria hasn't done that trick in years, not since we were just little kids, back in Highland! She's not even here right now, she's in college, back in Boston. We went to the Mall of the Millennium_ _to buy Christmas presents_,_ and..._

Quinn's eyes popped open, looking up at the bare rafters of the snowbound cabin, and she raised herself on her elbows. She and Stacy were snuggled in on either side of a motionless Sandi. Only the visible rise and fall of her chest under her sweater showed she was alive. The three girls had all had old newspapers laid on top of them, with folded newspapers serving as pillows under their heads.

There was no sign of Tiffany, but Quinn noticed the pile of scrap wood next to the stove was bigger than it had been earlier, with broken pieces of wood from the shed outside in the pile. There was another pile of wood by the backdoor that was in wet, frozen chunks. Quinn guessed it was from the pile just outside the back door. She could hear a dull thumping from outside. The back door creaked open, and Tiffany staggered inside, limping, her arms full of wet wood, wearing Quinn's gloves. She carefully placed the wood down on the pile already there, visibly trying to be quiet. Trembling, limping painfully, she closed the back door, placing a thick wooden bar in it's holder to keep it shut. Quinn hadn't even noticed this old fashion type of door lock, earlier.

Smiling wanly at Quinn as she sat up on the floor, Tiffany sank down gratefully on a bench. Her shoes, and the legs of her slacks were soaked and dirty. The arms and front of her light, white jacket was wet too, covered with pieces of damp wood, and mud. Quinn had never seen the elegant Tiffany looking so, well, dirty. Felling a gnawing ache deep in her stomach from her hunger, Quinn quietly got to her feet, and walked over to sit down besides her.

Quinn whispered, "Tiffany! You've been working so hard, just rest a minute! How come you didn't wake up Stacy or me to help you?"

Tiffany whispered back, glancing at Stacy and Sandi, still curled up on the floor. "I just couldn't, Quinn. You and Stacy were so tired when you came back, and I felt so bad about scaring Stacy, that I just had to let you rest! I've tried calling out on all our cell phones, too, but I st-ill can't get a signal out. But I got all the wood I could find for tonight, and it's almost sundown..."

"Sundown! We've got to..."Quinn blurted out, before she glanced at Sandi.

Tiffany shook her head."No, I've been listening, and looking outside a lot, and I haven't heard any people at all. But if you need to use the bathroom, or do anything outside, you'd better do it before it gets dark."

Hearing the concern in Tiffany's voice Quinn looked closely at her friend. There was a deep fear in Tiffany's eyes. "Why, Tiffany, did something happen while you were here today, alone with Sandi?"

Tiffany just stared at the floor. "Quinn, touch Sandi's stomach, just under her bellybutton."

Quinn looked at Tiffany in confusion, then walked over and knelt by Sandi. Reaching out her hand, she lightly touched Sandi's stomach. She jerked back, holding her hand with a cry, staring at her numb fingers, then fell back on the floor with a thump. Still staring at Sandi, Quinn got up, walking back to Tiffany, who still just stared at the floor.

Tiffany said,"I thought she might have that, you know, appendages, thing, broke open, you know? It happened to my mom, and they had to rush her to the hospital. That would have given her a fever, and cramps. But it's cold, like ice! How can that be inside her, Quinn?"

Quinn shivered, struggling to hold down a burst of raw panic. Stacy's strange behavior came back to her, and she clamped her mouth shut. If she told Tiffany about that, she would probably run screaming out the front door, next.

Sighing, she said, "I don't know, Tiffany, I just don't know, but we won't be here much longer. You know our mom's are probably terrorizing the police right now, I know my mom is!"

Tiffany sighed, "your mom, sure, my mom, and Stacy's mom, you mean."

Quinn was stunned to see tears running down Tiffany's face. She knelt in front of her, holding her cold, limp hands. "Tiffany! Don't cry, it'll be all right, we'll make it through this!"

Tiffany sniffled, her head still bent low. "It's not just that, Quinn, "she said in a dull monotone, 'look at Sandi's arms and legs, too."

Quinn looked down at Tiffany, then crossed back over to Sandi, and kneeling down, pulled Sandi's sweeter sleeve up her arm and gasped. Sandi's arm were covered with bruises. Checking Sandi's arms and legs revealed the same battered state. Tears ran down Quinn's own face as she hesitated, then pulled up Sandi's sweater. Bruises covered her ribs as well.

"What is all this, Tiffany?" Quinn said in a small, quiet voice.

Tiffany dully answered, "You know that Sandi has been having a lot of fights with her mother, right?"

Quinn said, her eyes still on the limp Sandi, "Her mom did this?"

Tiffany nodded, "And her brothers. Sandi and her mom had been arguing at the top of the stairs in their house, you know? Sandi turned away from her mom, and Linda shouted, "Don't you dare turn your back on me!" Sandi turned, but fell down the stairs, like she did before. She didn't break her leg this time, but she got really bruised. Linda just stared down at her, and called Sandi's dad, Tom, to take care of his daughter. Sandi was all bruised, but okay otherwise. Her brothers have always been rough with her, but once they found out that Linda didn't care what happened to Sandi, it got a lot worse."

"Why, Tiffany? Why were they fighting so much?"

"You, and your mom, Quinn."

"What?"

"Linda has always been really pushy, you know? She and your mom competed for the presidency of the Lawndale Businesswomen's Association, and she won. When she found out Sandi had invited you to be in the Fashion Club, Linda hit the roof. She calmed down when you and Sandi were fighting all the time, but things got worse when the Club dissolved, and you were still friends. Linda would never say anything to you, and her brothers thought by hurting her, they got even with their bossy sister, and you might approve. Linda got mad over how bad Sandi was doing in school, too. She's been saying that the only thing Sandi can do right is dress herself."

Tiffany looked up at Quinn, her eyes still brimming with tears. "I found out about this by accident. I didn't know how bad she was until I saw her arms a little while ago. My mom's really nice, Quinn! She'd never do something like this to me. Mr's Rowe is as sweet as Stacy is, you can see why she is the way she is. I know you've had fight's with Daria, but she's never bruised you, and your mom is really nice, and..' her voice trailed off

Quinn just stared down at Sandi. Little bits and pieces were coming together in her head. Sandi's dad getting quieter and quieter, her brothers being more and more pushy, her mom speaking less

and less, their never meeting at Sandi's house anymore. Sandi had worn slacks for several weeks now, never a dress, and hardly dated at all, anymore.

And now they were trapped in a cabin, miles from anywhere. Nobody knew where they were, they didn't have any food, they couldn't call out. Something was inside Sandi's battered, abused, body, and maybe in Stacy, too, something strange, even spooky. And she was in charge, Quinn Louise Morgendorffer, "the pseudo intellectual poser, with accessories from the street fair" as Daria had once called her.

Sandi had been really trying with her studies, too, trying to catch up with Quinn and Stacy. She would catch herself falling back into her old "As President of the Fashion Club", tone, and deliberately catch herself, cut herself down, turn it into a joke. And all this had been happening. And Sandi hadn't said a word.

Quinn stood up and stretched. "Let's wake up Stacy and Sandi. I don't want to go outside after dark either in this place. Please don't say anything to Stacy. You know how proud Sandi is, she'll be embarrassed. She'll probably need help getting outside, too, and using the bathroom."

Tiffany made a face, her sadness momentarily lifting, "Eww, Quinn, I can't believe you said that. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman!"

"Tiffany, you watch the strangest things on tv."


	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

The old cabin shuddered in the gale. The blizzard had gotten even worse after the still unseen sun had set. Even through the heavy wooden walls, the howling wind could be heard. The hot metal of the old stove pinged occasionally, followed by a sharp pop! from a piece of burning wood. The rusty old stovepipe creaked and rattled as stray gusts of wind shook the outside piece

Sandi slept uneasily on the bare boards of the old wooden bed, her white, pinched face visible in the dim, flickering firelight that leaked out of the old stove. Her hands were clenched over her lower belly, a constant whimpering coming from her bitten lips. Quinn had led Stacy and Tiffany in pushing the old bunk bed closer to the stove. Even without a mattress, it was better to sleep on than the floor. They had then pushed the table against the front door, trusting the thick wooden bar to shut the back door. Quinn had also taken some old axe and shovel handles from the shed, as makeshift weapons if needed, though against what she wasn't sure.

_What is going on here, _she thought bitterly to herself. _Sandi starts singing in what sounds like Japanese, and has ice in her gut, Stacy gets buried alive, and becomes a I don't know what for a few minutes, and Tiffany tells me Sandi fell down a flight of stairs, while her mother almost applauds watching! It sounds paranoid, but I'm starting to think we were lured here. Stacy and Tiffany weren't paying any attention to the road, and I was talking with everybody, but I think now we must be far away from the main highway. That time we were camping, Daria had trouble calling out, and she told me later that cell phone transmitters are mostly in big cities, and follow interstate highways. We must have driven straight away from the highway and Lawndale. The road was paved, but seemed old, now that I think about it._

At least things weren't all bad. They had cleaned a few rags from the shed enough to use as washrags, and cleaned their faces and hands, though they still felt dirty. Being a little bit cleaner seemed to help Sandi, anyway, though Quinn noticed another disturbing thing then. When she or Tiffany were with Sandi, touching her calmed herStacy couldn't get close without causing Sandi's cramps to get worse, much worse. Stacy seemed confused by this, and it brought her close to tears, at not being able to help Sandi.

Sandi was becoming a problem too. Her intense physical pains caused her to become short tempered, and her almost constant sobs were getting on the other girls nerves, even though they knew the pain she was in. _It's almost like she's getting close to having a baby, _Quinn thought, then paused. She tried to remember what she had ever heard about childbirth, from her mom's various "Birds and Bees' talks, and all those generally boring classes in high school biology, and safe sex talks._ Oh, My God! That cold point is right where Sandi's uterus is! _Quinn realized._ How can something that cold be inside there?_

Sandi huddled in pain, almost touching the stove, but still cold, even though she was sweating. Her hunger pangs were acute, in addition to her cramping belly. She had trouble drinking water, even though she was always thirsty. Fire and ice seemed to be fighting a war in her body, and both sides seemed to hate her. _Why me! I'm trying to do better! I'm trying to be better! I want to have friends, real friends! Why doesn't dad help me?! Why does mom despise me so much? She didn't care before about my grades! Now Quinn and Stacy are going to go away to college, and I'm going to be alone! Was I that bad a sister to Sam and Chris? Was I? _The sympathetic looks of the emergency room nurses ate at her, too. The questions about if she was sure her fall was an accident, the dark, questioning looks at her helpless father. _No, it wasn't my dad, it was my oh so important mother! Why doesn't mom love me, like Quinn's mom loves her! Quinn's nice, my best friend! Helen has been nice to me, too, she doesn't seem to hate mom, though she is wary around her._

The feeling of always being watched was getting to her, too. She seemed to feel a pair of cold, dark eyes, watching her every move, something pale and icy. Even worse, it seemed to be inside Stacy, her oldest friend. Stacy had this helpless look in her face, when her just getting close to Sandi seemed to make her pain worse. But when she would start brushing her unbound hair, Stacy's face seemed to blur, her hair darken, and Stacy's soft brown eyes become a hard empty darkness, drinking in all they saw. Quinn and Tiffany couldn't see it, but Sandi could.

Stacy nervously sat away from Sandi. Even when Sandi was asleep, she seemed to be looking at her, out of slitted eyes, afraid of her, Stacy! A shadow deep inside Stacy relished that fear, though, craved it. _All those years she bossed me around, she deserves a little payback,_ a little voice deep inside her whispered. _Just because she's nice now, I'm supposed to forgive and forget?_ _And the oh so beautiful and smart Quinn, and poor, stupid, Tiffany. You both put me down, too. Well, my time is coming!_ _I'm going to dance in the snow, free! Free of all of you!_

Dim visions filled her mind, wild, intoxicating, of strength and power, of hurtling over snow covered fields, free as a bird, a great white bird, a powerful gust of snow filled wind, that would blast away all who would try to stop her! She, Stacy, would take anything she wanted! She wasn't too sure yet of the _how_ or _why_, but she had received a promise!

Tiffany shuddered, staying close to Quinn. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she seemed to feel unseen currents flowing in the atmosphere of the battered old cabin. Quinn was the only familiar thing to cling to, and Tiffany could tell that the red haired girl was reaching the limits of her own strength. She had very deliberately sat between Stacy and Sandi, steeling herself. _We are four friends who care for each other, _Quinn carefully thought,_ Sandi Griffin, Quinn Morgendorffer, Stacy Rowe, and Tiffany Blum-Deckler. We were the Fashion Club, but now we are four friends. We got lost in the storm, it was an accident, that'_s_ all. We are ordinary teenage girls. We like boy bands, we read Waif magazine, we talk fashion, we love our families. There is nothing strange here, strange things aren't real. _

Quinn said, "Stacy? Who were you going out with tonight?" Stacy just continued brushing her hair, lost in her dreams. Her eyes were unfocused, a low humming coming from her throat. Quinn couldn't place the tune at first, but feeling Tiffany stiffening at her side brought it into sharp focus. It was the same tune Sandi had screamed earlier, the tune Tiffany had heard outside in the night.

"Stacy!" Quinn cried out.

The constantly moving brush slowed its rhythmic pace, then stopped. Stacy shook her hair back over her shoulders, the long brown strands almost rippling in an unconscious sensuality. She arched her body while still sitting on the bench, pursing her lips, and giving Quinn an almost coy look, like one of the models in Waif. Her normal appearance of sweet innocence seemed to fade, becoming sultry, wild, dangerous, three words Quinn had never even imagined about Stacy.

"Ye-es, Qui-nn? Did you ne-ed something?" Stacy purred, in a smooth, seductive tone.

Quinn gulped, becoming scared, bur determined to reach through to Stacy.

"Yes, Stacy, I asked who you were going to go on a date with tonight."

Stacy considered this for a moment, seeming to struggle, reaching deep inside herself for the answer to Quinn's question. Then she smiled.

"Why, it's Robert, Quinn. You do remember Robert, don't you? So tall and strong, with such big shoulders? He's not much of a dancer, but he's very nice and polite, and so very, "Stacy's voice trailed off.

"Very what, Stacy? Robert's very what?"

Stacy stood up and stretched.

"Why, nothing I'm sure you'd be interested in , Quinn. After all, you have your pick of the boys in school, don't you? The three J's trail you like puppies, begging for a treat that you never seem to have time to give, do you? So what do you care about Robert?"

"Stacy, Robert is very nice. I'm sorry you missed your date tonight. I'm sure that Robert likes you very much."

Quinn's quiet reply seemed to confuse Stacy. She stood, her brow furrowed, running her fingers through her long hair.

"Quinn, I, I'm sorry, I don't really know why I was so, so catty just now, it just seemed to come out of me, and, and, "Stacy's words trickled to a halt, as she slowly sat down again. She pulled her hair to the front, her fingers twitching, as if to braid it again. She held it in front of her eyes, staring at it, then let it fall, shaking her head.

"I like it loose, though, I'll keep this look, I think." Stacy said quietly.


	9. Chapter Nine

The four girls turned in soon after Stacy and Quinn's confrontation. Quinn was visibly trembling, while Stacy seemed as curious as she was sorry about what she had said. Stacy's increasingly strange behavior was eroding Quinn's strength as much as Sandi's illness. When they had simply been lost, Quinn could cope with things, she always had been a problem solver, like her mom, though Quinn's method of solving problem's was generally manipulating others to solve the problem, or bribing Daria to do it. But the things now happening were completely baffling to her. Quinn had always been a materialist, believing in what she could see. But what she was seeing now, she almost couldn't believe.

Sandi struck down by a mysterious illness. Stacy acting like she was turning into somebody or something else. Tiffany's naive comment about the Exorcist movie, and demonic possession, almost perfectly timed. In the dim, firelit cabin, huddled next to the softly moaning Sandi in the old bed, with the terrified Tiffany pressed closely on the other side, Quinn had the feeling of being trapped in a horror movie, and not knowing the ending. She was exhausted from the days events, the lack of food, like they all were, and fell into an uneasy slumber

The two benches had been pushed together next to the bed, forming a sleeping place for Stacy. The normally awkward, nervous, girl was calm, serene. As she lay silently in the darkness, her vision while buried in the snow earlier today had drifted back. The incredibly beautiful woman filled her thoughts. Like most teen girls in America, Stacy had a keen idea of what women were considered beautiful, and which were not. She had been glad to be in the Fashion Club, next to beautiful people, like Quinn, Sandi, and Tiffany.

She had almost worshiped them. She had imitated Quinn, even dressing like her once, and totally freaking out the normally confident redhead. But the longer she knew them, the more flaws she had seen in them. Quinn's fear of physical intimacy, Sandi's insecurity, Tiffany's fears of being on the wrong side of any conflict, even to being careful of how she spoke.

Stacy had long been aware of her own flaws, of her insecurity, of her fears of rejection. She was always aware of being the pretty one of the Fashion Club. The little sweetheart, but not the beauty.

But Sandi's crisis of faith when she had broken her leg and gained weight, followed by Tiffany'srefusal to do anything, had cracked the Fashion Club framework. Stacy had assisted the obnoxious, though intelligent, Charles "Upchuck" Ruttheimier, in his magic show, incurring Sandi's increasingly impotent wraith. The end had come this past summer, when Stacy had used her birthday wish to curse Sandi silent, and Sandi had contracted laryngitis. Doctors later said it was psychological, caused by Sandi's guilt at controlling Stacy for so long.

But Quinn and Stacy started improving together, leaving a struggling, increasingly desperate Sandi behind, and a Tiffany almost unable to even comprehend it. Still, they had tried. They had been together for so long. But Sandi's mother, Linda, had seen Sandi's need for friendship as hopelessly naive, a trick of Quinn's on Helen's behalf.

Stacy had seen her star rapidly rising, passing Sandi, and Tiffany. She was smarter than they were, she knew that now. Tiffany was going nowhere, would be lucky to become a small time model. Sandi was so abrasive because of her insecurity, but becoming extremely needy for reassurance. Her schoolwork had slowly bettered, but still, after their graduation from high school, would probably be stuck with Lawndale Community College.

Stacy smiled to herself in the darkness, amused by her analysis of their group dynamics. _Now I'm babbling to myself, like Quinn does when she's nervous. Still, Quinn hasn't been a bad role model, as long as I'm aware that she's not perfect._

Stacy breathed deeply, relaxing herself, listening to the sounds of the old cabin, the creaking noises of the stove, the rush of the wind outside through the trees. She had never been so aware of nature before, always rushing from place to place, inside a car or building. But now, surrounded by this storm, no electricity, no radios or TV. And oddly, she didn't feel cut off, so much as freed, from civilization.

Her thoughts focused again on her near death experience. The feeling of her blood slowly cooling in her veins, her breath leaving her body. First the snow, then the earth disappearing. And then _she_ appeared, like a star in the darkness _She's so beautiful, but she's dead. I thought when you died, you just saw a bright light, and then you were gone. But then, what are ghosts? Tiffany scared me, talking about that "Exorcist" movie. But the Snow Lady isn't evil, she doesn't feel good _or_ bad, she just is, like, like a snowstorm. _

_I wonder how the poor thing got trapped here. At least, I think she's trapped. She's so sad. I think she's been here a long time. And she touched me! She filled me with, what? Herself? It felt great!_ _It seemed to wear out, but it's still inside me, like a seed. I know it sounds evil, weird, but I think it's right, natural. _

Stacy opened her eyes, looking up at the ceiling. She gasped softly in wonder. Instead of the dimly flickering firelight, she saw patterns of color, constantly shifting. The metal of the rusty stove was a sullen red. Tendrils of color broke off from it, drifting through the air, like puffs of colored smoke. To her amazement, she glowed, though not as brightly as the stove. Looking over at the bed, she saw that Quinn also glowed, with an almost white flame. Tiffany, on the other side, dimly shone, with a soft light that reminded her of a full moon.

Sandi was difficult to see with Stacy's new vision. A gray, greasy looking haze seemed to cloak her, that twisted her gaze aside. Stacy hesitated, then tried to focus, bringing Sandi into a sudden focus, and she suddenly saw her.

Sandi looked like the negative of a picture, black bones shining through pale skin stretched tightly over them. Her brown hair was pale, white. A small flame seemed to flicker in the moaning girls chest, through the cage of Sandi's visible ribs. Stacy's vision was drawn to Sandi's pelvis, where her cramps were centered, and she choked in horror. There was a black, gaping hole, that seemed to suck in all light and warmth, there. It pulsed, almost like a living heart, sending waves of cold pain through the writhing girl.

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A sudden gasp brought Quinn out of her uneasy, dream haunted sleep. Looking up, she saw Stacy standing over her, a look of extreme horror, on her face, staring fixedly down at Sandi. Her hand's were clenched at her side, her breathing whistled rapidly in and out of her open mouth. Quinn yelped in surprise, and stumbled up, her stiff, sore body moving awkwardly. Tiffany opened her eyes, saw Stacy looming over her, and cried out.

Neither Sandi or Stacy moved. Sandi lay still, her chest moving slowly, her hands clamped tightly over her belly. The still stunned Stacy could see the bones of Sandi's hands intermittently, shining as the pulsing void seemed to beat in their grasp.

Quinn shouted, "Stacy! Dammit, what do you think you're doing?!"

Stacy shook her head in confusion. Quinn's sudden movement was like a flashbulb exploding in her eyes, stunning her, as the redheads white flame seemed to flare up against her. Stacy's strange new vision vanished, and she blinked in confusion, seeing the scene normally, now.

Quinn had grabbed a axe handle, and brandished it like a baseball bat. Tiffany huddled next to Sandi's comatose form, shivering in obvious terror.

Stacy just stood there, blinking. She slowly raised her hands, staring at them as if she had never seen them before. She was so much the Stacy Quinn knew, that Quinn slowly relaxed, though breathing rapidly herself.

Stacy looked up at Quinn, a look of total desolation on her face.

"I'm sorry, Quinn, I'm so sorry..."

Quinn's grip on her makeshift weapon tightened again.

"What's wrong, Stacy? What did you do?"

Stacy shook her head in frustration, unable to explain the Snow Woman's strange gift to her.

"Nothing, Quinn, it was nothing. It was just a nightmare, I guess,,,"

Both girls looked down at the sleeping Sandi.

* * *

Things calmed down, though nobody slept but Sandi, still oblivious, to Quinn's relief. Tiffany moved to the far side of Sandi, away from Stacy, leaving Quinn on that side. Stacy laid back down, as well, though her peace of mind was gone.

_I thought I knew what was happening here! (Well, most of it!) I think that my vision is what they call, oh, the vision thing where you see heat in the dark, that soldiers and police use to see things with without lights. But Sandi! What's happening to her? She looks like she's all reversed or something! And that black thing inside her is creepy! It feels all wrong!_

_Does the Snow Lady have anything to do with that? She must. Sandi screamed out the same tune that is running through my head. But Sandi's in all that pain, that's not right at all. Why is she that way, but not me? We're both girls, we do all the same things. I'm nicer than Sandi's been for a while. Sandi was a real bitch, when she got so jealous of Quinn, she still falls back into that a bit, but she's been trying so hard to loosen up. She's been having so many problems at home, too. Her little brother's are real monsters, and her mom is just so ugh! Her dad seems nice, though._

_That, that thing, that's inside poor Sandi, it's all dark and nasty, cold and creepy. It's right where a baby would be if Sandi was...OH NO! _


	10. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

(Halloween Night, six weeks earlier)

_Hell Night is the right name for tonight, _Sandi thought, as she slowly strolled along the crowded street. Laughing costumed kids and their glum chaperones moved slowly from house to house.. _Another screaming match with mom. I'd almost wish she'd have a heart attack, if it would shut her up! But no, she's a carrier, she gives other people heart attacks, she never gets them herself! Sam and Chris are out terrorizing the neighborhood_, _and dad's working late again_._ Knowing mom, she probably has a detective watching him. He wouldn't dare fool around on mom_._ She'd divorce him in nothing flat._

"You stupid little fool! How could you have let Stacy Rowe, of all people, destroy the only extracurricular activity you had! Don't you realize how much that kind of thing counts in college admissions?" Linda had shouted.

"Mom, that was months ago!" Sandi said, caught off guard by her mother.

"Why didn't you tell me? Do you know how much extra this is going to cost me sending you to a decent college? Not that I know why I should! If Li hadn't told me..."

"It was none of her business to tell you..."

"She should have told me when school started! Two and a half months into your senior year, no extracurricular credits, and your grades are pathetic! I am so tired of getting calls from your teachers, wanting to discuss "Sandi's lack of motivation!" I'm working my fingers to the bone at KSBC, trying to get in more accounts, while you're following that Morgendorffer girl around like a lost puppy! That was your club, and you let her and Stacy Rowe destroy it!"

"But, mom, they're my friends, and..."

"Friends! There's no such thing as friends! I thought you had figured that out these last two years, but no, I'm sweet little Sandi, I want friends! Friends just use you, stab you in the back at school or work, steal your accounts! That Morgendorffer girl has taken your club, your position at school, and the boys you used to date!"

"Mom, Quinn didn't do that! I'm trying to study harder now, I still date..."

"If I were you, young lady, I'd date harder! What kind of job are you going to get with these grades? You'll be lucky if you can get married to anybody decent at all! You're almost as stupid as that Tiffany! Why didn't you try to get that Sloane boy?"

"Mom, he didn't give a damn about me! He was dating Daria!"

"You little idiot! Rich boys like that always slum! It makes them feel like "real people!" But they get married to fashionable beauties, and..."

"Like you and dad?"

"Your father and I have worked hard to give you and your brothers everything, we weren't born rich, like that Barksdale woman was!"

"If the Morgendorffer's are rich, how was Tom dating Daria slumming?"

"You know what I meant by that! Don't you twist my words, young lady!" Linda almost screamed at her.

Sandi shouted back, her own temper on edge. "I am getting better grades, and I can take care of myself! Why do I have to get married? You and dad are such a perfect example of marriage to me..."

"Don't you talk to me about my marriage, you stupid, little..!" Linda screamed, her fist catching Sandi right in the face. Sandi gasped, falling backward, her back painfully hitting the wall, her suddenly weak legs dropping her onto the floor, where she just sat, staring in shock at her mother. Linda's teeth were clenched, while tears streamed down her red face. Her fists formed hard knots at her sides, as if she were ready to hurl herself again at Sandi..

Sandi stared back fearfully at Linda, and for a moment, neither mother or daughter stirred. Sandi's cheek burned from her mother's blow, and tears slowly started to leak down her own face. Linda abruptly turned away from Sandi.

Hoarsely, she said, "Do you enjoy getting me mad like that, Sandi? Does it make you feel important, to know that you can make me lose my temper like this? I have to kiss ass all day long, to make money for KSBC, begging morons for ad money, while they sneer at me, and my so-called fellow managers steal my accounts, and run my work down to the station owners. I interviewed the First Lady of the United States! I should have made it to network TV! But no, I'm in Lawndale, vice president of advertising at a local TV station. And that stuck up Helen Barksdale, with all her money from her parents, runs against me for president of the Lawndale Businesswomen's Association!"

"Well, you know what? She can go crawling back to Texas, with her psycho husband, and those two spoiled brats of hers! And, you, Sandi, I am going to make you see reason if it kills me. You're grounded this weekend, so why don't you catch up on that studying you claim you're doing!"

Linda turned and left, going up the stairs to her bedroom. Sandi just sat on the carpet, still in shock. Sobs started to develop deep inside her chest, but Sandi wasn't about to let her mother see her cry. She ran up to her room, and grabbed her jacket and keys, running down to the garage. She groaned, seeing her mother's car parked directly behind hers. Resolutely, she stuffed her keys in her jacket pocket, and walked down the drive to the sidewalk, where she turned and just started to walk.

_Is it my fault Mom hit me? Did I make her do it? Is the TV station that bad of a place to work? Why doesn't she just get another job? I don't know anymore! _

_How can it be bad to be friends? It's fun now, when we're all together. Stacy is getting so confident, Quinn is just so smart, and even Tiffany is trying to get better. She's even making jokes now! Tiffany, making jokes! Quinn and I aren't fighting all the time, and we all just like being together!_

Sandi was unused to the physical exertion, and her legs soon felt the strain. She still enjoyed swimming, but walking used different muscles, and she felt worn out from the confrontation with her mother. She moved away from the crowded residential streets with their trick or treaters. The few people who paid any attention to her always seemed to notice her cheek first.

_Great, just great. I must have a really big bruise this time, and I didn't think to put makeup on it before I went out. Why do we always seem to have these fights on Friday nights? I try to avoid mom, or get out of the house, but it never works. Mom always ignored me before, she almost never came out of her office in the den._

The wind gusted, sending leaves swirling across the empty pavement. Shaken out of her inner misery, Sandi realized she didn't know where she was. It seemed to be an older part of town, with a lot of trees, and boarded up buildings. There were a few shops, but the whole area seemed abandoned, run down. Looking at her watch, she found out that several hours had passed since she had left the house.

_It's almost midnight! I must have really spaced out! Where am I, anyway? Lawndale isn't that big, and I don't remember ever seeing this part of town before. I left my cell phone in my room, too_. _Not that I'd call home for help, but now I can't even call Quinn or the police._

Sandi shivered. The dark alleys seemed to be full of cold eyes, glaring silently at her. She gulped, then turned resolutely, and started walking slowly up the street.

_What happened then, Sandi?_

_I...I'm not sure, I was in shock, I think. I remember the city, and the walking, and all those faces, and all the masks. Dead faces, and only their eyes seemed alive. Their eyes would stare at me, and look away, or ask if I were okay, or make horrible suggestions. I don't know which ones were the most cruel, that night._

_---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Stacy's look of horror and despair had calmed Quinn and Tiffany down, and the three girls sat together, quietly talking to each other, though not about the strange things happening. They talked about the latest issue of _Waif_ magazine, and eyeliner, and how various friends and family members were doing, and dates, and anything else that didn't touch their current situation.

Suddenly, Sandi laughed in her sleep, drawing the shocked attention of the other three. Her thin white hands still cradled her cramping belly, but now there was a wide sweet smile on her still sleeping face, and she murmured what sounded like endearments, though they were very indistinct. Quinn was suddenly struck by the by the thinness of Sandi's face. Glancing out of the corner of her eyes, she noted the same look on Tiffany and Stacy.

_Well, this certainly beats liposuction, _she thought._ The three day freeze your tail off, and just eat snow diet. I wonder if I can patent it? _

Quinn shook her head in frustration, trying to focus. She felt so tired and cold. Sleeping on the bare wood of the bed left her feeling bruised and stiff. Her hair felt dirty, her face felt greasy, even after a sponge bath. Her thinking felt foggy, unclear. She knew it was partly their forced fast, and their poor sleeping conditions.

_And lets not forget two possible conditions of ..what? Possession? Stacy turning into a catty, creepy version of Vampirella (Brr, I'm sorry I ever went into that comic book store that one time and saw that). And Sandi acting like she's pregnant, but seems to have a block of ice inside her. What's up there? Stacy saw something last night, but she won't tell me what, and I'm afraid to ask her in front of Tiffany. She's almost as freaked out as Stacy was, before Stacy started to freak out the rest of us._

Sandi yawned loudly,and putting her hands to her sides, slowly sat up, her eyes still closed, smile still on her face. The smile dropped when she opened her eyes, and saw Quinn standing next to her. She let out a piercing shriek, and lashed out at her. Quinn gasped at Sandi's attack, weak as it was, and backed away.

Sandi reached out to Tiffany in desperation. Tiffany glanced at Quinn who frantically motioned to her to go to Sandi. Tiffany slowly walked over to her and sat down next to her, putting her arms around her. Sandi huddled in Tiffany's arms, staring in fear at Quinn and Stacy, whispering the same words over and over.

"Gaijin! Oni gaijin!"

Tiffany looked up at Quinn and Stacy in confusion.

"Quinn? What's she saying?"

Both girls looked at Stacy. She sighed, and said, "I don't know how exactly I know this, but I think it means "foreigners, devil foreigners" in Japanese."


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Chapter Eleven **Daria Morgendorffer pried her hands off the steering wheel, her thin shoulders shaking. The drive from Boston to Lawndale in her small dark green Toyota Corolla had been nerve wracking. The crowded, snow packed highways had been littered with fender benders, though thankfully she hadn't seen any really serious accidents on the trip. She hadn't been able to call her parents or her friend Jane at all, with various excuses being given by her cell phone company, ranging from overloaded circuits to heavy snow, to sunspots. The regular phone service hadn't been any better, with downed lines everywhere.

She had thought about canceling the Christmas trip home, but she had promised her folks and sister Quinn that she would come and she was (just a little!) homesick. Besides, she had to pick up Jane to take up to Boston for the spring semester. It was very late, but to her surprise, the lights all seemed on in the house. The harsh wind blew the drifting snow into fantastic shapes on the lawn. The erratic gusts seemed to spin columns of snow into almost human silhouettes, before they disappeared again. Icy crystals danced in the air, sparkling like small stars. Daria took off her glasses, rubbing her tired eyes, before putting them back on. She was glad to be home, but looked forward now to nothing but a hot shower and a warm bed.

She zipped up her coat, and grabbing her small black overnight bag, stepped carefully out in the storm. The cold wind lashed at her, blowing her auburn tresses wildly about. Her heavy black boots swished through the powdery snow as she carefully ploughed up the walk to the front door of the house. She used her key to slip inside, just in case anybody was asleep.

She was shocked to see the living room was a mess. The artificial Christmas tree was set up in the corner. The usual array of Christmas cards decorated the wall. The small table was covered with coffee cup stains, loose papers, and oddly enough, state highway maps. There was a stack of pictures of Quinn. Her sister's dazzling smile, with its flawless complexion beamed out at her.

Her dad Jake stepped out of the kitchen, not noticing Daria at first. He was sipping on a steaming cup of coffee, unshaven, his dark hair uncombed, fatigue plain on his face. Daria just looked at him, suddenly tongue tied. Jake was dressed casually, in dark pants and a thick sweater. He stared almost numbly at the flickering screen of the TV. Daria frowned. She hadn't told anyone she was coming in for sure, so why was her dad up?

Daria cleared her throat hesitantly, not knowing what to say. Her dads eyes flicked to her in confusion, then suddenly lit up in joy.

"Kiddo! My God! Daria!"

Her dad dashed over to her, coffee slopping from the cup onto the floor.

"Dad! The coffee!"

"What, kiddo?"

"Dad, its great to see you too, but lets put the coffee down on the table first, please?"

Jake looked confused for a second, then carefully put down the coffee, before crushing Daria in a powerful hug. Daria hugged back, gasping from the pressure.

"Jake! What's going on down there?"

Her mother Helen's voice came echoing down the stairs.

"Helen, it's Daria! She's here! Our little girls come home!"

He shouted, hugging the struggling Daria even tighter, before breaking into sobbing.

Daria froze. The hug she had expected, and Dads overwhelming welcome, but not the tears. Looking up, she saw Helen at the top of the stairs, a tired smile covering her face, while tears ran down her cheeks. Her mother looked tired, almost ready to collapse, but she rushed down the stairs, and added her arms to the hug of her oldest daughter, before she also began to cry.

"Mom, Dad, I'm, uh, sorry, but I can't breathe!"

"Oops! Sorry, kiddo!"

Jake reluctantly let go, but Helen was almost collapsed onto Daria, still crying. Jake steered his wife and daughter to the living room couch, and sat them down, where Helen still held onto Daria tightly. Daria glanced up the stairs, expecting to see her sister standing there smirking down at her, before descending gracefully, and adding to the clinch, but saw nothing.

"Mom? Dad? Is anything wrong? Where's Quinn?"

At the sound of her sisters name, Helen squeezed Daria even tighter, then slowly let go, still holding her daughters hands. Daria looked at her mother almost as if she had never seen her before. The strong, capable, take charge corporate lawyer looked wrung dry, almost frail. Dark circles were under each eye. Her hair hung limply. A empty feeling grew in Daria's heart.

"Mom? What's happened? What's wrong?"

Looking up at her father, she saw the same desolation that filled her mothers eyes. Jake cleared his throat, and looked at his daughter with a pain filled face.

"Daria, Quinn went on a shopping trip three days ago to the Mall of the Millennium, with her three friends, you know the ones, Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany? That was the night the storm started, and, uh, nobodies seen them since."

He growled, "Police threatened to arrest me if I went out! They said the roads were closed for a reason, and if I went out and got stuck somewhere, they wouldn't be able to look for your sister!"

"Jake, please don't start now!"

Helen let go of Daria's hands, wiping her face with a tissue.

"There hasn't been any reports of accidents, and their cell phones and credit cards haven't been used since that night, " she added. "I've tried over and over to call you, but I could never get through!"

Her mothers old strength started to resurface.

"The highways and streets have been closed, and it's almost impossible to go anywhere. Oh, Daria, I'm glad to see you, but you took such an awful risk to get here!"

She frowned, "How did you get here? The roads are closed."

Daria subconsciously squirmed, but kept her straight face.

"I just listened to the radio for the road closings, and used a map to find a way around or through them."

"Oh, Daria, sweetie! You always were so smart!" Helen said, squeezing her daughters hands tightly. "We think that's what happened to Quinn and her friends, too, but they took the wrong turn and got lost! My poor baby might be frozen to death! And the police can barely get out and look themselves in this horrible storm!"

"Look, Mom, never tell her I said this, but Quinn's not really, well, dumb. She's actually pretty smart, when she wants to be. As long as she can keep dry, and reasonably warm, she should be okay. The four of them are probably really hungry right now, but they can huddle together in the car to keep warm."

Helen sighed. "That's just what the police said too. "

"Um, how are the other parents taking this?"

"Stacy's parents have been as worried as we are. Mr. Blum-Deckler is out of town on business like Jake was. Tiffany's mother, Natasha, is very composed, but I saw her wiping her eyes when she didn't think anybody was looking."

"And, uh, the Griffins? I sort of noticed you didn't include them."

Helen frowned. "I don't know what on earth is wrong with that woman! Tom Griffin showed up with us at the State Police office, to give them details about Sandi and that old yellow convertible she drives, but not Linda! You'd think a girls mother would be more interested. But no, not Linda Griffin! Tom gave me some weak excuse about her being sick, but still! Normally, Linda doesn't pass up any opportunity to lord it over me."

"That sure doesn't sound like Linda, from what little I know about her."

Helen wiped her eyes. "It's just so good to see you, Daria. You must be so tired too, after that long drive, and all that snow. Why don't you try to get a little sleep? Your father and I have been taking turns catnapping, so we don't miss any possible news of Quinn."

"Mom, I'm sure she'll be okay. They're stuck somewhere, cold and tired, but alright. I'm worried too. I'm not really that tired right now. I can sit up with you," Daria said, barely stifling a yawn.

Helen smiled sadly at her. "Well, at least go upstairs and relax, sweetie. You must be tense from that long, awful drive."

This time Daria didn't catch the yawn in time. "Good idea, mom. I'll just wash up a bit. Um, I had a bit too much coffee on the way here."

She slowly walked up the stairs, stopping and looking down from the top. Her parents sat together on the couch holding hands, smiling up at her, before their attention turned to the TV again. After using the bathroom, Daria walked up the hall, looking into her sisters room. Noticing the unfinished report on the dresser, she glanced at the title and froze, almost biting her tongue, while inwardly swearing at Mr. DeMartino, her former and Quinn's current history teacher. She could just hear him giving the assignment to Quinn's class.

"Now, while you people are GORGING yourselves, this JOYOUS Holiday Season, I want you to COMPLETE this ASSIGNMENT, and remember SOME people DON'T have things so EASY!"

The large black letters stood out boldly on the cover page of Quinn's report: **The Tragedy of the Donner Party, in the Winter of 1846 through 1847. Documented Cannibalism in the American West.**

Daria crumpled the page in her fist.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve**

Tiffany trembled as she held onto Sandi's shaking body. Sandi was desperately trying to crawl away, but didn't even seem to have the strength to sit up in bed. The formerly elegant brown haired leader of the Fashion Club was nothing but skin and bones. The skin was tightly pulled across her cheeks. Ominously, Sandi's lower belly had swelled grotesquely, reminding Tiffany not of pregnancy, but of children starving to death overseas.

Quinn meanwhile was in full lawyer mode, her fear and anger coming out in her intense questioning of Stacy.

"No more of this Stacy! This isn't some stupid game! How do you know that's Japanese?! Don't you understand what's going on here?! If Sandi doesn't get some help soon, she might die! Just look at her!"

Stacy raged back. " I already know, Quinn! Do you think I planned any of this? Sandi is my friend too! You're the one who was giving Sandi directions! If it's anyone's fault we're here, it's yours, not mine!"

"That's got nothing to do with any of this!"

"It doesn't? Maybe this is all some plan of yours! Poor lost Quinn, sole survivor of the ill-fated last trip of the Fashion Club!"

"Do you hear yourself, Stacy? That's just crazy! This isn't some TV movie! This is real! We're lost! We could all die! Our parents must be worried sick about us! Remember your Mom and Dad, Stacy? How come you aren't thinking of them right now!"

"I am thinking of my parents! I want to go home, and none of this is my fault! You're getting just like your sister, twisting everything that everybody says! Is that what being smart does to you?!"

"Stacy, this isn't about who's fault it is! Something's happening to you and Sandi, and it's killing her! It's not killing you, is it? What's all this Japanese stuff?"

"I don't know! I'm having some weird dreams, okay? I don't know what they mean! But they make me feel special! I'm not hurting anybody!"

"Stacy, we're all getting hurt! Just look around you! We are starving to death here! We're eating snow! We're always shivering, its always so cold in here! You know shivering burns calories!"

"It's not because of me! I don't want to be here any more than you do. I just had some freaky dreams, okay? They made me feel beautiful! I'm smarter now, I know that, but I'll never be as beautiful and smart as you or Jodie no matter how hard I study! It was just nice to feel beautiful for once, like the Snow Lady!" Stacy gasped, covering her mouth, but it was too late.

"Stacy, who's the Snow Lady? What are you talking about?"

"It's just a dream, okay? A stupid dream! I don't want to talk about it! Now just leave me alone!"

"We can't! Something's happening to us, and we have to work together! Something supernatural is doing things to Sandi and you. We can't leave, and we can't get any help. We are totally alone!"

Quinn and Stacy glared at each other across the bed until a weak hoarse voice seized their attention.

"I, I always thought of you as beautiful, Stacy, " Sandi said, holding onto Tiffany for support.

"Sandi?"

"The first time I saw you, I thought to myself, "That Stacy Rowe is so beautiful, such a sweetheart." You've always been the nicest of us, even when Quinn and I were fighting like cats. You've held us all together, kept us going, even when you were so sick of the rest of us, you couldn't stand it. In spite of everything, you were always the heart of the Fashion Club. You're very beautiful, Stacy, and not just because of your looks, it's because of who you are!"

Sandi collapsed back against Tiffany, shaking from her outburst, tears running down her wasted face. Stacy and Quinn stared at each other, white faced, then walked over to Sandi and Tiffany, sitting down on either side of them. They all just looked at the floor for several minutes, then sniffing started. The four girls, tired, hungry, and afraid, all just started to cry.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daria Morgendorffer, on the other hand, was seriously thinking about murder. She was jammed in the back of her mothers SUV with Sandi's eleven year old brothers, Sam and Chris, who kept wrestling with each other. "You're stupid!" "No, you're stupid!" She and Quinn had often argued and schemed against each other, but this was ridiculous. Would they have been like this if Quinn had been a boy? Daria shuddered at the thought of a male Quinn, unable to picture anything other than the supremely obnoxious Upchuck as a brother!

Tiffany and Stacy's mothers sniffled in the back seat, wiping their eyes continually. Her mother Helen had picked up the other mothers in her 4WD SUV. Her dad, Jake, had stayed at home to man the home front. Traffic in Lawndale was restricted to four wheel drive vehicles, though the interstate highways were still closed. Linda Griffin sat tensely in the front seat, tightlipped, other than a curt thanks to Helen for the ride. They were on their way to the Lawndale City Hall, where the mayor was giving a press conference on the blizzard emergency.

Daria had really wanted to stay home, but her dad's weak heart and tendency to start rambling about old problems under stress had picked her for the job of support for her mother. Quinn's disappearance had hit her parents sharply, as had Daria's first six months in college, a fact Daria hadn't fully realized until her return the night before. Neither Jake or Helen had gotten any sleep at all.

Daria's own sleep had been filled with vague nightmares, unremembered except for one she had had just before Helen had gently knocked on her door in the morning. She had been laying on her friend Jane's bed reading, while Jane, caught up in an artistic inspiration, painted feverishly. Her models had been Quinn and her friends, Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany, all standing in stiff poses. The only things moving were their eyes, frantically searching the room, until all eight of them settled on Daria. Daria had squirmed under their pleading gaze.

Jane raised her dripping paintbrush with a extravagant flourish, and said, "Tiffany!" To Daria's shock, Tiffany's figure had collapsed into a swirl of ashes, her clothes and shoes laying empty on the bare wooden floor. Jane's door had banged open, and a quiet sob echoed up the stairs.

Jane returned to her painting, humming quietly, as she carefully painted the next figure. Daria was terrified of who it might be, but wasn't able to get up and look over her best friend's shoulder. Jane frowned with intense concentration, then with a quiet satisfaction said, 'Quinn!" Daria stared numbly as her little sisters still form gradually faded away, becoming transparent, until she turned into a sculpture of crystal clear ice. Her eyes still stared at Daria in mute appeal.

Daria tried to get up, clear her throat, anything to stop Jane, but she was petrified. Jane seemed to become a madwoman, painting feverishly, her brush anointing the canvas in precise strokes. To Daria's shock, Jane seemed to change under her eyes, her black hair becoming longer, flowing down her back. Jane stretched, looked down at her canvas, and said, again in quiet satisfaction, "Sandi!" Daria's unwilling eyes were drawn to the girl who had been at the same time her sister's closest friend and greatest enemy. Sandi's eyes seemed filled with resignation, as her body slowly shriveled up, becoming nothing more than skin stretched over bone, still locked in her pose, a frozen mummy.

Jane now focused intensely on her almost completed picture, her breath whistling through her bared teeth. Daria bit her lip, ground her nails into her palm, anything to stop Jane, but was still helpless. Jane slowed, breathing harshly, as she carefully finished her work. She stood up, staring down at the unseen picture, her still wet brush clenched in her hand, paint dripping off the bristles onto the floor.

The room temperature dropped, becoming freezing. Daria's breath puffed out in front of her in a thick fog. The quiet auburn haired girl **did not** want to know the picture was finished, but still couldn't move, as Jane dropped her brush to the floor, and grabbing the easel, turned the picture around. Daria's eyes took in the already seen forms of Tiffany, Quinn, and Sandi, before they took in the transformed Stacy Rowe. The still wet paint on the canvas showed a blurry image of the quiet, shy, pigtailed girl, fading into white at the edges.

A gust of wind filled the room, blowing out the windows, the curtains tearing in the blast. Stacy's figure abruptly exploded, her face expanding until it faded into the storm. A shriek of joy filled Daria's ears, becoming a cry of pain and betrayal.

Daria had started awake, Stacy's shriek still in her ears, as the Morgendorffer house shuddered in the still raging storm.

After that Daria had been very glad to get out of her bed. She had showered to feel more alert, and dressed warmly, in a green sweater and black slacks. Breakfast had been nothing but a slice of toast, followed by a big mug of coffee.

She sipped it as she stared out the kitchen window into the snow filled backyard. The drifting snow would blow into strange, almost disturbing shapes, before reforming. Daria's dream was still fresh in her mind, causing her to shudder.

_No reason to get too analytical about things, _she thought. _I'm worried about Quinn and her friends, so of course I would be dreaming about them. Of course, this storm filled my mind with all these images, of ice and wind. And I'm certainly used to Jane drawing satirical pictures of people, so my subconscious threw her into the mix! _

"Daria!" Helen's voice broke into Daria's reverie. "Will you please settle those two down! Linda, will you tell your sons to behave themselves? Driving in this snow is bad enough, and we really have to focus!"

The two boys had wilted under their mothers white faced glare. Linda's cold glance had chilled Daria to the bone. There was no tears in her eyes, just a cold blank fury. Even Mrs Rowe and Mrs Blum-Deckler in the back seat had shrank from Linda's glare.

_What is wrong with Linda? _Daria thought. _She's not acting upset over Sandi missing, she's acting furious, like it was a snub or something! What is going on in that family? Linda seems really wired_._ I could understand her being upset, but why angry? What little I know about her is that she's very competitive with Mom, almost like Quinn and Sandi were back in high school. Mom always felt Linda was putting her down all the time. Sandi always came across as a stuck up snob, though from what Quinn has said, she seems to be trying to escape from that image. _

As Helen pulled into the parking lot of the Lawndale City Hall, where the Police Department was located, Daria saw a bustle of activity. A snowplow had just finished scraping the lot, and was heading out to the street. Snow seemed to fall as fast as it was cleared away. The police cars were being outfitted with snow chains, because otherwise they weren't able to handle the city streets at all. Several news vans were parked in the lot as well.

The reporters zeroed in on the new arrivals the minute they walked in the door, though the KSBC reporter avoided Linda. Helen was well known locally, from her high profile corporate cases. "Mrs Morgendorffer! How do you feel about the lack of progress in the search for your daughter?" "Mrs. Morgendorffer, do you blame the city's slow response to act in this emergency on the current administration?"

Another reporter, braver (or more foolhardy), tried to nail Linda, only to shrink from the sheer fury in her face. Sam and Chris shrank behind Daria, maintaining a very conspicuous silence. The lobby grew silent, with everybody staring at Linda Griffin's tense form. Fists clenched, breath whistled raggedly through her bared teeth. Nobody dared to make a sound.

Daria seemed to be looking down on herself as she walked over to Linda Griffin. Her hands down at her sides, she stood in front of the older woman.

"Mrs. Griffin?"

Linda turned her almost blind gaze to Daria.

"Mrs. Griffin, why don't you come with me for just a minute, to, to freshen up, all right?"

Daria held out her hand. She gasped as Linda's hand closed on it in a crushing embrace, but turned, and led the older woman to the ladies room. A blonde woman, standing in front of the mirror adjusting her make up, looked at the two as they walked in. One look at Linda's and Daria's faces made her grab her purse and gingerly ease out of the room.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Chapter Thirteen**

The four girls sat quietly together for several hours after the argument and Sandi's declaration. It was Tiffany who broke the silence.

"Like, I'm glad we're all friends again, but what do we do now?"

Stacy, Sandi, and Quinn all looked at each other and shrugged. Quinn spoke up first.

"I just don't know, Tiffany, I'm all out of ideas right now. We're all tired, dirty, cold, and hungry, and I just want to go home."

Tiffany frowned, "But what do we do about Stacy's ghost? Or is it Sandi's ghost? Or is it Sandi's devil? I'm really confused."

Quinn opened her mouth, then thought. What was bothering her two friends? What was the difference between Sandi and Stacy? Why was Stacy feeling so good about whatever was happening to her, and Sandi so bad? Tiffany had seen the light, and heard singing, but not been possessed. She decided to approach the subject carefully.

"Stacy, please tell us what you meant about the Snow Lady. We just want to hear about your dream or whatever, it might help us figure some of this out, okay?"

Stacy looked down at her feet. Since Sandi's confession about always thinking of Stacy as beautiful, Stacy had been thinking about the last two years of school, of the flaws and strengths in each of the ex Fashion Club members, without the condescension she had felt the night before

_I'm better than I was, but then, we all are. None of us are perfect_. _Sandi may be a real bitch sometimes, but so was I, last night._ _Tiffany might be bossy, and clueless_,_ but that's to cover up her fear of rejection. They're both afraid! Neither one of them have any friends outside of the four of us. Quinn has guys chasing her around, but outside of that Lindy she's talked about_, _no real friends_. _And Lindy isn't a friend anyway, just somebody Quinn cares about. Even Daria wasn't a real good friend to her, though she wasn't a good friend to Daria either. I really don't know. Aren't families supposed to get along with each other? Not fuss or fight all the time? Even my mom used to get this look whenever I said something dumb or stupid. _

_And the Snow Lady. What's going on with that? Sure, I feel sorry for her, but she's got to have some connection to what's happening with Sandi. Is she a ghost? But I thought ghosts weren't real, just something for people to write stories and make movies about. And if she's a ghost, how is she a spirit of Nature? I saw her bones. Can part of Nature die? Was it just a hallucination from being buried in the snow?_

Stacy sighed, shaking her head.

"Well, this is what's happening..."

The other three girls sat quietly through Stacy's story. She held nothing back at all. The vision, seeing underground, even the way they each looked at night, Quinn's sunlit radiance, Tiffany's softer glow, and Sandi's almost negative image.

Quinn shook her head.

"That night vision thing sounds like what the police and army use, to see in the dark, you know, with heat? But what we look like? That sounds like, you know, New Age stuff? Auras and crystals? And why do we look all different from each other?"

"Well, Quinn, you are all positive, you know," Sandi said." Maybe that's what Stacy saw. Tiffany's really, um, low key? Quiet. Stacy couldn't see herself."

"But Sandi," Tiffany said, "What about you? All that, eww, stuff about black bones. Why would she see that? It makes you sound all, um, reversed, inside out. And your, ah, um, condition, with the cold and cramps and swelling?"

Sandi's burst of strength faded. She collapsed back against Tiffany, whispering, "I don't know, Tiffany, but maybe it's only fair."

Her lean body convulsed, wringing a shriek out of her emaciated face. Blood trickled down her chin as she bit her lip. Then Sandi really screamed. Her swollen belly heaved and twisted, as if something was moving inside it. Tiffany jumped away from her. Sandi passed out, eyes closed, laying limply on the bare wood of the old bed. To their horror, her huge belly squirmed, jerking Sandi around like a limp rag doll for several minutes, before it slowly stopped. Sandi's breath whistled through her clenched teeth. Her skin seemed to tighten even more on her face, almost making it look like a bare skull.

They clustered by the front door, staring at her in fear. Stacy's hands covered her mouth, as she whispered over and over," Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!" Tiffany huddled behind the other two girls, her nails digging deeply into Quinn's arm where she grabbed it.

_Guardian angel, where are you! _Quinn screamed silently. _I'm really, really scared out of my freaking mind! Is Tiffany, of all people , right? Are there ghosts and devils here?_

A dark, chilling thought filled Quinn's mind.

_And is there one in Sandi trying to get out?_

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Sandi Griffin swam inside her skull through a sea of pain and darkness. Something was trying to claw its way out of her. Images of people she knew screamed at her, her mothers contempt, her fathers helpless love, Sam and Chris's open hostility. The beauty of her friends, Quinn's radiantly good looks, Tiffany's cool calmness, Stacy's openhearted friendliness. Guilt gnawed at her.

_And I almost ruined it all! Me and my "Fashion Club!" Trying to impress Mom with how well I could control things! Well, Stacy showed me, didn't she? Quiet little Stacy took it all apart. No wonder she and Quinn are close friends now. Tiffany's better off with them. What am I anyway?_

_I'm not smart like Quinn and Stacy. I'm not a workaholic like Mom. She only takes time off to impress other people with the money and power she has! I'm stupid and lazy! I'm mean and selfish! **I deserve to go to Hell!**_

A cold harsh wind blasted through Sandi's tortured mind, filling it with images of densely falling snowflakes. Icy crystals sparkled, their geometric designs flashing brightly. She saw bare limbed trees break under their crushing mantle of white. The stiff frozen limbs of men, women and children emerged from the shrouding blizzard, victims of the searing cold. This was raw winter, stripped of the rebirth of spring. Dead eyes stared back at her, frozen wide open for all eternity.

Sandi whimpered. The dead eyes accused her, blamed their agonizing deaths on her. She wanted to look away, close her own eyes, but couldn't. She saw waves of sheer cold wash the world like waves against a beach. Large fur covered animals froze in their tracks, their mouths still full of fresh grass and flowers. Rivers of ice formed, grinding down mountains in their path.

Men and women tried to survive this cruel new world, eating meat, wearing furs. But the cold trapped them. Avalanches roared down mountains, burying tribes. Waves of ice cold water washed islands and coasts clean, leaving no trace of small groups of fishermen, scattering their bones in the deep water. Cracks would open in clear blue ice, trapping hunters, leaving their hungry families helpless.

A cold clear voice spoke to Sandi.

"_Do you see the way of the world now, child? This world teeters on a razors edge, between fire and ice. Your ancestors knew this, but you didn't even imagine it, did you?"_

"No! I'm sorry, so sorry, I didn't know! Who are you?! What are you doing to me?"

"_I? I am the cold in the outer spaces, the frost on dead leaves, the ice and snow. I do nothing to you. You and your companions have been caught up in tragedy. Your friend Stacy will find out that to all things there is a price."_

"What about me?!"

"_You?_ _You bear death, woman who is still a child, you bear death. It lurks inside of you, peers out of your eyes. It hears what you hear, and will speak with your tongue. "_

"I don't understand."

"_You refuse to. You already know what you ask, you four, but do not yet know it. The answers are buried in your own mind, Alexandra Griffin."_

"Are you an angel? Or a devil?"

"_I am what the people of the Land of the Rising Sun would call the _**Kami**_of the Cold, the Spirit of the Winter. See now what truly is!"_

Sandi felt herself yanked abruptly upward, her spirit caught, hurled upward like a frail leaf. Her attention was forced to the bare limbed trees. Wrapped deep inside the sheltering bark, she saw inside each tree a slumbering spirit, resting until the time spring would awaken her.

Ghost like forms danced along the howling winds, barely seen. The clouds themselves became dim forms hurling through the wild skies, wild riders on massive horses. Tall mountains were revealed to be giant manlike forms, slumbering in an eons long sleep.

Also sleeping were men and women, trapped in long forgotten graves, their bones scattered, their flesh dust. Good people and bad people alike, long lost to humanity. Their desperate spirits shouted out to Sandi, calling her to remember them, their deeds and names, great and small.

Sandi plummeted from the sky, soaring through the snow, soil and rock as Stacy had before. A pathetic huddle of bones called to her. The cry was desperate, a dying mother pleading for the child already lost, fury at an absent husband. The rage of a dying soul. Immortality betrayed by love and lust.

Sandi screamed in pain and tried to run, but wherever her spirit went, it saw with it's new eyes. The very air teemed with the ghostly images of men and women, of the forces of an uncaring, indifferent Nature personified, each and every gust of wind, even the very stones in the fields pulsing with life.

Sandi swan through this throng, feeling a tug. She could feel her body calling her back to her world of physical pain, but struggled ahead, feeling stiffer and stiffer. She stumbled through walls that seemed to become more and more solid, until she passed through one final one.

Her mother, and Quinn's sister, Daria seemed to be arguing with each other in a bathroom, on the opposite side of a mirror from her. Quinn and Daria's mother, Helen, stood in the open door, a startled look on her face, as she pointed toward the mirror. Daria and Linda turned to Sandi, looks of shock on both their faces

Sandi reached out, but the mirror shattered at her touch.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Chapter Fourteen **

Daria stared into Linda Griffin's tortured face. The older woman stared directly at Daria. Daria felt the lip of the sink pressing against her lower back.

_What the hell do I think I'm doing? I'm not a counselor! Granted, I couldn't be much worse than the ones I've had to see. I just didn't want the press conference outside to degenerate into a brawl. I want Mom to nail the mayor to the wall for the crappy job Lawndale's done clearing the streets, and looking for Quinn and her fellow ex- Fashion Club drones. Dad's holding on by the skin of his teeth, and Mom is really scared. And as much as I hate to admit it, I'm sort of worried about my fashionable little red headed twit of a sister myself. _

'Do you want to have children, Daria?"

Linda's question caught Daria totally off guard.

(Careful, Morgendorffer, none of your smart remarks, this woman is one step away from either going postal or going ballistic.)

"Its not very high on my list of things to do right this minute."

"Don't. Don't ever have children."

"Mrs. Griffin, I know you're worried about, um, Sandi right now, but..."

"Worried! About that stupid lazy daughter of mine?! I gave up my career for that little tramp!"

"Mrs. Griffin, I'm not your daughters biggest fan, in fact, I don't like her at all. I don't really even know her. But Quinn seems to think she's worth something."

"Quinn, ha! She and that Stacy Rowe have had Sandi eating out of their hands! Ever since Jodie Landon's graduation party, Sandi hasn't had control over anything!"

"Mrs. Griffin, I'm hardly the one to defend society, but Quinn and Stacy aren't really all that bad, and they've been trying hard lately to change. Even Sandi and Tiffany have tried to be better. There is more to life than being in charge of a high school club focused on lipstick and eye shadow!"

'That ungrateful little brat cost me my chance at being a network news anchor! I interviewed Rosalynn Carter, the first Lady of the United States! I was national! Tom and I were going places! Then the station found out I was pregnant! I got demoted to doing backyard parties, and cooking shows!"

"If you hated it that much, why the hell didn't you just get an abortion?!" Daria grated out, yanking her hand out of Linda's crushing grasp.

'Everything is so easy for you, isn't it? Public women couldn't get abortions then, not without a lot of grief! The station was owned by this sanctimonious old coot who went to church every Sunday with his wife, but still had time for visiting his girlfriend on Saturday night! He would have fired me on the spot!"

"Mrs. Griffin, you know what? I don't give a damn about that right now! My sister, your daughter, and two other girls are lost! They could be frozen to death right now! At the least they are tired and cold! They need to be found! Their mothers are outside right now. My mom is worried sick about Quinn. My Dad could have a heart attack because of this!"

"I wouldn't put it past those little slut's to be sitting in a motel room right now!"

"Linda Griffin, my sister is not a slut! If she's doing anything at all like that, I'll be right with you in strangling her! But those four have grown up. Maybe just a little bit, but they have! You know what happened last year? Quinn got a crush on a guy because she liked learning. The tutor your

daughter ignored, got Quinn to love learning, to stop judging people by how they looked, and what they owned! And maybe if you'd have paid a bit more attention to your daughter, this might not even be happening!"

'How dare you blame any of this on me!"

"My dad may be clueless sometimes, and my mom is a rabid workaholic just like you, Griffin! But you know what? They care about their daughters! They worry about us! I certainly did everything I could to get on their nerves, and Quinn wasn't much better! But they keep on trying! I was always so focused on why I didn't seem to get along, I never once thought of how they felt, and the sacrifices they made for their kids!"

Linda was taken aback at Daria's icy defense of her family, but was too far gone to pull back now.

"Sacrifices, what sacrifices?! Your mother has had her Barksdale money behind her her entire life!"

"You know what, Griffin? For a ex-reporter, you sure don't get your facts straight! Mom doesn't get any money from her mother at all! That all goes to aunt Rita, and cousin Erin! Mom and dad make the money they spend. They work hard for every penny of it! Maybe they're comfortably well off, but they'll never be rich! I don't know what's happened to your family, and I don't care! I'm surprised Sandi's not even more screwed up than I already thought she was! "

Daria's mind latched onto Linda's attitude.

"Wait a minute, that's what this is all about isn't it? You think Sandi ran off and did something crazy, and when the police find her, you might get the blame! Just what is going on?" Daria shouted at Linda, her voice rising, "If that screwed up fashion doll daughter of yours decides to end it all, and takes Quinn and the others with her, it will be all your fault!"

Linda hissed back in a rising fury, "You think you understand what a parent goes through, little girl? You don't get it at all! You work and slave your whole life! The people you work with always trying to steal your work, your accounts, your credit! Then the major chance of your life gets thrown away, because you feel all maternal, and want to have a cute little baby! But you know what, Daria, you have to work harder than ever then! And now matter how you try, they never seem to listen to you! Then Tom got worried about not having sons to carry on the family name, so I had Sam and Chris! I had to work harder and harder! But I spent so much time with the boys, I lost all touch with Sandi! I come home late at night, and she's snuck out of the house on a date, or sitting up talking with her friends!"

"And when we do talk, it always turns into a fight! She is like me, don't you think I don't know that?! You have to fight, to keep control of things! But she doesn't understand! She wanted to control things, but wasn't clever enough to do it right! She had all the boys at Lawndale High wrapped around her little finger! Then you and your sister shows up. Prettier than Sandi, and smarter than Sandi! Did you know that Sandi really liked you at first? And she idolized Quinn!

But then Quinn started taking away everything from Sandi, and Sandi had to fight back! But she was never any good at it. Do you know how much Sandi loves Quinn?"

Linda laughed harshly at the look of disbelief on Daria's face

"Not like that! But haven't you always wanted a friend, that you could talk to, share things with, that seemed to know what you were thinking, and always cared? That's what Sandi wanted out of Quinn!"

"Believe it or not, Mrs. Griffin, that's something I do understand. I've had one friend in my entire life like that. I nearly lost her once, because of something stupid I did, and if Sandi thinks that's what she found in Quinn, well, I hope it works out."

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"Mr. Mayor, you have completely failed to have given an explanation as to your lackluster response to this blizzard. Highways are not being cleared, power lines are being downed, the citizens of Lawndale are running out of their basic services!"

Walter Smits quailed under Helens intense questioning. The short portly mayor perspired freely under the bright camera lights.

"Mrs. Morgendorffer, you have to, ah, understand, the sheer, uh, magnitude of this storm!"

"That's why most city government's have emergency plans, Mr. Smits! What about my daughter Quinn, and her friends, Stacy, Tiffany, and Sandi? There has been no word from any of them at all! Four young women in the prime of their life!"

Smits gulped.

"Really, Mrs. Morgendorffer, the police are doing everything they can!"

"I'm sure _they_ are!" Helen said. Nobody missed the emphasis she placed on _they._"But why are there so few of them?"

"Well, ah, retirements, ah, and budget cuts, you see?"

"What I see is a very few men and women trying to do the impossible! How can they protect this city if you don't find qualified replacements?"

"Well, ah, you know?"

"What I know, Mr. Smits, is that of this cities three snow plows, only one is working right now, because the other two have been stripped for parts! This is indeed an extraordinary storm, I will agree with you on that! But what have you used the money you saved with all these budget cuts for?"

Smits could see the news crews leaning forward, almost wetting their lips. He saw himself as roadkill, with buzzards closing in.

"Because of your lack of preparedness, our little girls might be buried alive, who knows where! We demand action, Mr. Smits!"

"Ah, I've, ah talked to the Governor, about calling out the, ah, um, National Guard. In fact, he should be calling me back right now! Please excuse me!"

Smits walked rapidly out of the lobby, and the accusing glare of TV cameras and distraught mothers. Helen barely restrained herself from going after him.

_That little weasel! He'd better call out the National Guard! He's going to need the protection! If anything happens to Quinn because of his stupidity!_

Stacy and Tiffany's mother were staring at her in shock.

"Helen," choked Stacy's mother, "do you really think this will help? The mayor might be mad, now?"

"Let him be as mad as he likes! His administration has known all year that this winter was supposed to be bad, and that man did absolutely nothing to prepare the city for it!"

Helen frowned.

"Where's Linda and Daria?"

Natasha Blum-Deckler blinked.

"Ah, I think they are st-ill in the bath-room."

As Helen turned and walked toward it, she thought, _So that's where Tiffany got that from!_

Helen frowned as she heard the rising voices from behind the bathroom doorand quickened her pace, her heels clacking loudly on the tiled floor. She braced herself, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Linda and Daria glared at each other on either side of the sinks, framing the large mirror. Linda's face was red and flushed, while Daria was white as a sheet. The mirror was curiously blank, and drew Helens attention, in spite of her concern for Daria.

Helen gasped, and pointed as the mirror seemed suddenly to clear, a ghostly white image coming into view. It was the gaunt, haggard looking form of a teenage girl, her belly grotesquely swollen

Her hair was streaked with whiteand she weakly, piteously reached out for help.Daria and Linda turned, staring at the ghastly formWhen its finger touched the surface of the mirror, a fine network of cracks suddenly laced it, and it quietly crumbled into a thousand pieces.

It had been Sandi Griffin.


	15. Chapter fifteen

**Chapter Fifteen**

Sandi had settled into a sleep tormented by unknown nightmares. She had seemed to be talking with someone, a conversation ending with a scream that echoed across the bare walls of the old cabin.

"Mom? Can't you see me? I'm so sorry, I'm so very sorry, please help me! Mrs. Morgendorffer, thank God! We need help. We all need help so bad, please, oh, please! No, No! It's not true, not Death, not dead, oh, please, you're scaring me, oh my God, Stacy, don't do it, don't listen to her! Daria, please, she wants Quinn, she wants all of us, eat us, body and soul, please, Daria, save Quinn! Save us, save them, oh, please!"

The howling storm outside shook the small cabin, as if to remind them of their isolation. The girls could feel the cold seeping from the walls and floor as they huddled around the rusty old stove and their shrinking supply of firewood. They had been forced to clean up the comatose Sandi as well, reminding Quinn of the worst of her babysitting jobs.

"Why do you think Sandi was asking your mom and Daria for help, Quinn?" Tiffany said, her voice even slower, more precisely paced than before.

"I don't know, Tiffany, I just don't know. Mom and Sandi seemed to get along okay, but I don't know why Sandi would be dreaming about her. Daria should be home now, unless this storm got her stuck in Boston."

Quinn abruptly got up and started pacing around the old cabin frantically. Her once elegant casual shoes were falling apart, and squeaked badly. Stacy just looked up at her dully. Tiffany sat next to Sandi, holding her hand, and murmuring quietly to her in a sing song chant a song she said was a Vietnamese lullaby, which was the only Vietnamese she knew.

"We've got to do something. We've got to do anything!" Quinn said."I've got it! First thing in the morning, we'll make a big fire, so somebody will see the smoke!"

"But, Quinn," Tiffany said. "What if its still snowing? How will anybody see the smoke? And we don't have much more wood anyway."

"We'll burn down the cabin if we have to! I don't want to spend even one more day in this place!

I'm tired of all this! I'm tired of being hungry and cold! I'm tired of nightmares, and having to take care of Sandi! What are we going to do if she gets worse? How do we know the same thing isn't going to happen to you next, or Stacy, or me? I want to go home! I'm scared, Tiffany! I've been trying my best, but I don't know what's happening anymore! I'm just a girl, for freaking sake! I'm not a priest, or a Ghostbuster or anything like that! The last time I was in anything even close to a church, was at my cousin Erin's wedding! I don't know any spells or chants or anything like that! I believed in guardian angels because I watched a TV show about them! And bad things still happened to me! Why is this happening now!?"

"Quinn, please calm down, we need you!" Tiffany pleaded. "Without you, we'd be worse than we are now. You know that in a roadside emergency, you're supposed to stay where you are, and signal for help. If you burn down the cabin, we'll freeze, and Sandi won't make it. I know, ew, that she gets all dirty, and its gross cleaning her, but we have to take care of her."

Tiffany's impassioned speech shook Stacy awake.

"Tiffany's right, Quinn, "she said. "We know you've been under a lot of stress, but you've been doing a great job, and we need you! We might not even be alive, without you now!"

"Oh, sure, a great job I've been doing! I got us lost, watched Sandi get possessed, watched you get buried alive, watched Tiffany get firewood! What have I done that's so damn important, huh?

You want to tell me what freaking good I've been doing, Stacy Rowe?!"

"You've kept us organized. That's what you've done! You've kept us from running off in different directions and getting us all lost, and you saved my life when I got buried in the snow outside! You-saved-my-life-Quinn! I know you're under a lot of strain, but we need you! You're our leader! Sandi can't do it, I'd probably mess it up, and uh, I'm sorry, Tiffany, but."

"Its okay, Stacy, " Tiffany said quietly. "We all know that I'm not a leader."

"You, see. Quinn? I'm sorry, but we need you. I'm with you. So is Tiffany, and Sandi would be too, if she was conscious. We're all tired and dirty and hungry. We're all scared of this spooky stuff. We've all gone on fasts before to lose weight. You know that people get mood swings badly when they do that. That's part of what's happening now, and you know that."

Quinn collapsed into Stacy's arms, and started to quietly sob, trembling. Stacy held onto her tightly, but gently.

"It'll be okay, it'll be all right, things will work out, you're so tired, Quinn, just rest, just for tonight, okay? Tiffany and I can handle things for at least tonight. First thing in the morning, you and I will get all the wood we can, and light that fire, if it stops snowing. We'll try to find the car too, all right? We can even try to climb a tree, and maybe our phone signal will reach somebody. So we've got lots of things to do, so you just rest and relax, all right?"

Stacy led Quinn over to one of the benches, and made her lay down, cradling Quinn's head on her lap. Stacy winced occasionally from a cramp, but stayed still to let Quinn sleep. She looked up, to see Tiffany looking at her strangely.

"What is it, Tiffany?"

Tiffany smiled at her, shaking her head.

"Stacy, with a little more practice, you'd be a really good leader, I think."

"Not right now, thank you! But, thanks anyway, Tiffany."

The night passed slowly. Tiffany slumped down next to the sleeping Sandi, and they huddled together for warmth. Stacy quietly pulled another bench up to Quinn's, and huddled next to her. No matter how close she got to the fire, the only part of her that was warm was whatever part that touched Quinn.

_First thing I'm going to do when I get out of here is to take a hot bath for a whole week! _She thought, barely stifling a yawn. _I don't think I've ever been this, ugh, filthy._

Very slowly, Stacy noticed that her seeing shifted to the surreal vision she had earlier, with bands of color, weaving their way around the room. She was alarmed to see that Tiffany's soft glow was dimmer. Looking quickly at Quinn, she sighed with relief to see the same sunlit radiance, but then frowned. Quinn's glow had slightly faded, and even seemed to be flickering. Remembering what Sandi had said about auras', she guessed it was because of the stress Quinn was under. She sighed, and steeling herself, looked at Sandi.

The same greasy gray light still surrounded her, and it was even harder for Stacy to force her sight through it. The thinly flickering flame that was Sandi's life was even fainter, barely visible through her rib cage, the bones still dark, negative.

The throbbing, pulsing dark void deep inside Sandi's hips was even bigger, seeming to be stronger, wrenching at Stacy's strange new sight. She was filled with a strange fascination to throw herself into it, to become one with it, whatever it was. She tried to pull her eyes away but couldn't. Growing frantic, she tried harder, until it reluctantly, slowly, let her go.

_What was that about?! Whatever that thing is, its getting stronger, and bigger! Its eating Sandi alive, from the inside out, like those wasps' Ms. Barch told us about once. They would sting other bugs, paralyze them, and lay their eggs inside them, ugh, eating them alive! But how is that connected with the Snow Lady? I need more information. I have to ask questions. _

Stacy reluctantly sat up, looking at the front door.

_I'm terrified, but I have to go outside, see if I can talk to her, whatever she is. What she gave me feels wonderful, but what if it turns into the same thing Sandi's got? Or maybe Sandi has one thing, and I have another part of it? Sandi saw something too, I think, that's why she was talking like that, but I don't dare wake her up, now, she's been in so much pain! Quinn was right, we've got to do something, but Tiffany was right too. It won't do any good to make a signal fire until the snow stops. If we burn the cabin, it leaves us outside in the snow. We could burn the shed or outhouse, but what if we need that wood for the fire?_

Looking down at the sleeping Quinn, Stacy noticed that the pulsing of Quinn's glow was in time with her breathing. A child's rhyme connected with breathing came to her.

_Out goes the bad air, in goes the good air._

_Hm, _Stacy thought. _We're like little stoves, we burn what we eat and drink, the fresh air helps it burn, the bad air leaves! I guess that makes fat like wood that doesn't get burned,_

She shook her head

_I'm scared and I'm just delaying this. Quinn's right, we can't take much more. I've got to settle things._

Stacy gently got up from besides Quinn.The exhausted red haired girl stirred fretfully for a minute, then settled back. She moved carefully across the creaking floor until she was next to Tiffany, who sat up at her approach, blinking sleepily.

"What is it Stacy?" she whispered.

Stacy beckoned her away from the other two, and Tiffany carefully moved with Stacy to the far side of the cabin.

"Tiffany, listen to me, I'm going to go outside now, and see if I can find out what's going on."

"Ew, Stacy, you mean go talk to the ghost?"

"Tiffany, shh! Don't wake them up!"

"Eep! Sorry, but that's dangerous! Ghosts kill people, or possess them and make them do bad thingsWhat if you come back wearing a hockey mask or something else gross?"

"Tiffany, a hockey mask?"

"You know, like the movies!"

"Tiffany, just because there's a ghost, doesn't mean its going to be like a movie! This is real!"

Impulsively, Stacy gave the other girl a hug. Tiffany stiffened, but slowly returned it.

"See, Tiffany? I might be a little different, but I'm still Stacy Rowe! I want to go home, too. I want to have dates, and go to college, and go see movies, and drive cars. But I need to find things out. The Snow Lady didn't seem to hurt me beforeand I can only hope she won't hurt me now!"

"But Stacy, you said she's dead and trapped here. That means she couldn't help herself, doesn't it?"

Stacy shivered. Tiffany had just pointed out the flaw in her impulsive plan.

"You're right, Tiffany, but I've still got to try. Maybe it will help us, and then we can help her."

"How do you help a ghost, Stacy? You heard what Sandi was saying. Stacy, don't do it, and she'll eat us, body and soul! What if she wants you, Stacy! "

Tiffany's normally bland, expressionless facewas terrified, her dark eyes bright with fear, not only for herself, but for Stacy.

"I, I don't think I have a choice anymore, Tiffany. Maybe, maybe if she does take me, the rest of you guys can go, or find the car, or something."

Tiffany smiled sadly.

"You know, they are going to get so mad at you for doing this, Quinn and Sandi."

Stacy smiled back, tears running down her face.

"I know."

Stacy slowly buttoned up her light coat, looking down at the sleeping girlsThe skin on Sandi's pain ravaged face was stretched tightlyacross her skull. Her wavy brown hair showed streaks of white. Even standing where she was, Stacy could feel the waves of pure cold pouring from Sandi's belly.

Poor Sandi, all she really wanted after all was a cute little baby and some close friends. And now, her mother and brothers hate her, and she's going through hell with whatever that thing is. In spite of all the times she put me down, she really was trying to do better. I'm glad we got closer these last few months.

She looked down on the sleeping form of her closest friend.

And Quinn! You were always the ultimate girl for me, so beautiful, and so clever, I wanted to be so much like you. I'm really glad we talked so much these last few months, about life and things.

She looked up at Tiffanytrying to think of something to say, but was afraid she would start crying. Wiping tears off her face, Stacy Rowe opened the old wooden door, and closing it firmly behind her, stepped out alone into the darkness of the raging storm.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Chapter Sixteen**

The counter top under Daria's fingers was the only thing that felt real to her as she gaped at the shards of the broken mirror, the horrific pleading image of Sandi Griffin burned into her mind. Her dreams of the night before crashed back into her consciousness, stunning the normally cool, collected college student. Sandi's mother Linda was breathing in loud, frantic gasps, staring in fear at Daria. Helen still stood in the open door stunned, staring at the two women.

It was a shaken and pale Helen who finally broke the fragile silence.

"What, what just happened in here? Was, was that, **_Sandi?_**"

Linda's fist slammed into the counter, rattling the broken pieces of silvered glass, making both Daria and her mother jump.

"No! It's just a trick! A dirty, damned trick!" Tears ran down her face as she choked out the accusing words. "I've heard all about how sneaky you are, _Daria Morgendorffer_! All those clever little tricks you pulled on everybody back when you still lived here!"

Daria shook her head in sheer disbelief at Linda's words.

"Linda Griffin, how can you stand there and say that! Didn't you see that, that, whatever that was? I might be cold sometimes, but I would never pull such a raw thing like what just happened at a time like this!"

"Linda, I realize you're upset, and worried about Sandi," Helen said. "But that gives you no right to accuse my daughter of, of, well, whatever just, uh seemed to have happened in here!"

"I've got every right!" Linda shouted, color coming back into her face."Your daughter was just accusing poor Sandi . . . "

"What!" Daria shouted back, unable to believe Linda's bald faced lie.

"It's true! She was blaming my little girl for everything bad that ever happened to Quinn!"

"Griffin, you wouldn't know what truth was if it fell from the sky and hit your head! You just spent fifteen minutes calling your own daughter a worthless disappointment!"

"You lying, little, four-eyed freak!"

"Daria! Linda! **Enough**!" A red-eyed Helen barked. "That is more than enough out of both of you!"

Linda shouted right back, "You've got no right . . . "

Helen replied in a crisp, clear voice, "Our business here is finished! We are not going to give the local news a cat fight in the bathroom at City Hall to distract them from the real news of our missing daughters! That horrible little man who got elected mayor will just try to use it to wiggle out of doing anything! I want you to both go outside looking concerned for our loved ones! Linda, you know that given the choice between important news, and a scandal, the scandal always seems to win! We do **not** need a scandal right now!"

Glaring at Daria, Linda replied, "All right, Helen, I'll do this your way, for now, but this is far from over!"

"Daria, please? For Quinn's sake?"

Unable to trust herself to speak, Daria nodded, though she was still furious.

Linda brushed past Helen on her way out, her body tense and stiff, the door closing behind her. Helen looked steadily at Daria and cleared her throat.

"Daria, I know you're upset right now, but please, lets just go home? We can talk there, and I will listen to what you have to tell me, but not here and now, all right?"

Daria looked at her mother and realized again just how much this ordeal was taking out of her. Helen's face was thin and drawn, her eyes reddened, with dark circles under them. Her hand, reached out to her, was trembling. She slowly nodded, and taking her mothers hand, squeezed it gently, before letting go, and taking a deep breath, followed Linda out the door. Helen's gaze followed her, before it shifted back to what was left of the shattered mirror on the counter top. Frowning, she slipped a small camera out of her purse and took several pictures of it, and scooped up several shards in an envelope from her purse before she followed the other two out the door.

The mayor was locked in his office, and the news crews were packing up their gear and pulling out, though the reporters were asking about local road conditions from the chief of police. The outside door opened to let in two figures in thick coats, and Daria heard two familiar voices.

"Like, wow, the police station! I told you I could get you here! My jeeps great in this snow!"

The taller figure pulled off his knit cap to reveal the face of Kevin Thompson, with his straight black hair and square jaw. The former QB of Lawndale High unconsciously flexed his biceps before relaxing, his face serious.

"Hey, Jane, look! There's Daria and her Mom!"

Daria's face lightened as Jane smiled at her. Jane shook her head, her black bangs framing her heart-shaped face, her piercing blue eyes taking in the sight of her closest friend.

"Yo, amiga! What's up?"

"Am I glad to see you! Ah, and you're with Kevin?"

"Get your mind out of the gutter Morgendorffer," Jane chuckled, "we're just friends. All will be explained, and fortunes will be told."

Helen came over to the trio.

"Jane, it really is good to see you," she said. "Can you give Daria a ride home? I'd appreciate it."

Jane's eyebrows went up at the request, but sensing the tension in the room only said, "Sure, Mrs. M! I'm, uh, well, I hope they find Quinn and the others soon."

Helen smiled sadly.

"Thank you, Jane. I really appreciate that. Daria, please come home in two hours? We really need to talk about all this."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daria sighed in relief as she settled in the back seat of Kevin's red Jeep. Kevin and Jane climbed into the front seats after her.

"Okay, Kevin, take us to Casa Lane, slowly and safely this time, ok?"

Kevin nodded, and his face serious, focused on his driving. Daria and Jane glanced at each other, but both were hesitant to break the silence. Quinn and the other girls missing were behind Jane's reluctance, and the presence of Kevin was behind Daria's. Daria stared outside at the still falling snow. The cold bit at her through the thin material of the jeeps top. Daria unconsciously compared it to the similar top of Sandi's old yellow convertible. Her always active writers imagination swiftly painted a picture of Quinn's sleeping face, her breathing slowly stopping as her body froze, slow tears crystalizing on her cheeks. She jerked awake with a slight gasp to see Jane holding her hand while Kevin drove, a sympathetic look on her face. They were all quiet until they arrived at Jane's house, and parking the Jeep, went inside.

"Daria, come on upstairs and we'll talk." Jane said, "and Kevin, you know what to do, right?"

"Right, Jane!" Kevin replied. "Watch the sports channel, don't wake up Trent, and uh, don't eat anything in the frig! Got it!"

"Trent's not here right now, he's at a gig in Oakdale, but you got it right, especially the part about the refrigerator."

Kevin smiled bashfully and left them, going into the living room.

Daria's eyebrows had gone higher and higher at this performance.

"You've trained him well," was her only comment as they climbed the stairs to Jane's room on the second floor.

Jane laughed softly.

"Kevin's not so bad, once you get his attention, and let him know you're serious. That Brittany really had him screwed up on how to deal with people. He was moping around like a lost puppy, and I sort of adopted him. His dad is horrified, but his Mom likes the fact that I'm getting him to understand women are not all either babes, or popular and unpopular people."

"How did you get him to not call you "babe?""

"Used a two-by-four."

"Um . . . "

At the head of the stairs they turned into Jane's room, which also doubled as her studio. Painting supplies and clothing littered the place. Several paintings leaned against the walls, ranging from naturalistic to abstract in nature. Jane liked to experiment with different styles of painting. One canvas caught Daria's attention immediately, though. It was still on an easel, partly turned away from where she stood. Daria stopped, staring at it.

Jane looked at her friend uneasily, tilting her head.

"Amiga? Is anything wrong?"

"Jane, that painting you have there, what is it of?"

"Its just a landscape, using some Japanese elements on a snow covered background. I found an old book my mom picked up when she was in Japan, with examples of painting by some old dude named Hokusai, and decided to see how well I could do something similar. It came out pretty good, I think. All this snow, you know, I can't do much right now but art!"

Daria stepped around so she could see the painting clearly. It was quite unlike Jane's usual work, which tended to satirical or abstract themes. It was a quiet scene of a grove of pine trees covered in snow. In the foreground was a paper lantern hung on a post, standing by a patch of snow which seemed unnaturally smooth, as if it covered a path. Two darkly varnished posts stood in the background, topped off with a gently curving crossbeam on top of it, like a gate or door to nowhere. A dim shadow was under the beam, very indistinct, in a white flowing gown. Its long dark hair was all that could be made out of the features of the shadow.

The still vivid memory of her dream the previous night crashed down on Daria. The image of what Jane had turned into burned into her weary, careworn mind. With a choking cry, Daria stumbled from the room. Jane glanced in bewilderment at her painting and chased her friend out the door.

"Daria! Hold up! What's wrong?"

At the foot of the stairs, Daria ran into a confused Kevin, who had started up the stairs at Jane's shout. She slammed into the ex-QB like the offensive line of an opposing team, the shorter woman's shoulders catching Kevin perfectly in his stomach. He went down like a sack of potatoes, a loud grunt escaping his gaping mouth. Daria scrambled over his limp form, but the delay gave Jane a chance to catch up, and she threw her arms around her friend, who struggled briefly, before she dissolved into tears. Jane held on tightly, still confused by Daria's outburst, but sensing Daria just needed to let something out. Daria wasn't crying so much as choking, dry painful gasps from deep inside of her.

A groaning Kevin slowly climbed up off the floor, but one look at Jane and Daria stilled his outburst, and he shuffled painfully into the kitchen, to give the two young women some privacy.

Jane felt Daria slowly stiffen in her arms, and she let go slowly, knowing from long experience that Daria was ashamed of any emotional outpouring. Daria stumbled over to the couch and sank down on the far end, groaning, her head in her hands.

Jane stepped lightly up the stairs, coming back down with a glass of water and some aspirin, which she left on the small coffee table in front of the couch She disappeared into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. Daria recovered to the point of gulping the pills down, the cold water soothing her parched throat. She stared blankly at the figures on the Pigskin Channel, Lawndale's own all football, all the time channel, the sound muted.

_I am a rational person. Everything that occurs to us is a result of natural forces acting in a predictable pattern. You understand the pattern, you understand everything. But dreams? Jane and I are old friends, but why would I dream about a woman I've never seen, while Jane paints a picture of her? I can't see the face, but there is no doubt in my mind of who that woman is. The sheer certainty of this belief is frightening! And why the Japanese elements? That archway on Jane's painting is a **torii**_, _a Japanese design element, with religious meaning, though few people know that. What do Quinn and her friends have to do with Japan? _

_I can see me dreaming about Quinn. I am worried about her. We are sisters, even though until I graduated high school, we fought almost constantly. I despised her shallowness, her materialism, her focus on popularity in high school. But we both changed. I learned to appreciate the sacrifices Mom and Dad made for us, the burdens Quinn and I were. She learned to use her mind for study, to read, to understand me, as I slowly learned to understand her, her feelings, her fears. _

_I am a writer. I have a fertile imagination that I've used to tell gullible people stories they should have known better than to believe. I've written violent revenge fantasy's that have disturbed some people, like my "Melody Powers" stories. Like anybody's going to believe in a James Bond female character who's shooting everybody in sight! But its just my imagination, based on my feelings, things I've read and pieced together._

_Other than that weird time Jane and I both thought we met the living incarnations of holidays, living in a dimension reached by a hole in the back of the Good Times Chinese Restaurant,( and I still think that was food poisoning), I've never seen anything even remotely "paranormal", a term I despise. Most weird things are only misunderstood natural phenomena, that people don't observe correctly._

A smile quirked the corner of her mouth

_Like Jane Lane, Artiste Extraordinare, and Bohemian, hanging out with Kevin Thompson_, _the dumb jock poster boy_ _and male chauvinist_, _and turning him into a decent person. Well, Jane does like to tackle hopeless cases. She tried so hard to get her brother Trent and I together as a couple, and then even tried that time with Tom Sloane and I, though I was not ready for that kind of relationship, even not counting the fact he was her ex-boyfriend!_ _What a mess that was! _

Jane sighed in relief upon entering the room, and seeing Daria had composed herself. She hadn't seen her high school friend since Daria had gone away to Raft College in Boston, and missed their two outsiders against the world companionship.

"Its okay now, Jane," Daria said. "Not quite the way we partners in crime planned our reunion, is it?"

"Look, Daria, its okay, I understand a bit of what you're going through. You know my family is generally scattered all over the world at any given time, and Trent and I are never really sure where any of them are, especially mom and dad. We'll hear about a disaster that's close to where they might be, and no matter how far we've grown apart, I still worry a bit. We traveling Lane's will never be as close as you Morgendorffer's are, but you still care about your family members, at least if its something important, no matter how much you might be bugged by them otherwise."

"I had never thought of that before. You've never expressed all that much concern about where your parents, or brother and sisters might be."

Jane shrugged. "I don't obsess about it. Its their choice, and I'll probably do the same thing, once I get out of college. We Lanes are a footloose bunch."

"Including Trent?"

"Trent can't stay awake long enough to get that far!" Jane laughed. "I love that brother of mine, he's been the only real family I've ever had, but I know what he's like. Still, he's already said he might visit us up in Boston."

Jane hesitated, her face sobering.

"Daria, I hate to intrude, but even I can tell something else is going on with you and this business. I never got along well with Quinn. That one time she spent the night at this house drove me crazy. That girl will not stop talking! But I know that you two got a little closer this past summer, and as irritating as Sandi Griffin and her soldiers of fashion could be, I never hated them, just ignored them."

Daria's eyebrows rose steadily at Jane's statement.

"You hate to intrude?"

"Ouch! I set myself up for that one, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, Matchmaker Lane! But for this one time only, I'm going to ignore it. I really need to talk to the person I trust most about this, and a lot more is going on than you know."

Daria then filled Jane in on everything that had been going on, the dream coming out slowly, reluctantly. Jane listened intently, not interrupting, staring at Daria's face, which was at its most immobile. When Daria had finished, Jane let out a low whistle.

"You know, Daria, if anybody else was telling me this, or if I didn't know that Quinn and company were missing, I'd think I was being put on."

"You believe me?"

"Let's just say I know how your mind works, and I don't think you would be making this up right now. Besides, my sister Penny has told me some freaky stuff that she's gone through in Central America. Nothing quite like yours, but its made me keep an open mind about the unseen."

"I guess that makes you Fox Lane, and me Dana Morgendorffer."

"Well, I am a foxy lady, don't you think, my partner in the X-Files?"

"Jane, can you ever see either one of us joining the FBI?"

"Damn, Daria, I've missed talking to you like this! All of the give and take. But all this talking has jarred loose something in my brain. You remember Andrea Hecuba?"

"The Goth girl? She was alright. Why?"

"I ran into her at Payday, and we chatted a bit. She mentioned she thought something bad had happened to Sandi, but she was called away before she could tell me what. Might explain why things are so tense with Sandi and Linda, and might explain if Sandi's the cause of this, or a victim like the others."

"That's a good idea, but what about the other stuff? Sandi in the mirror, the mirror breaking when she touched it? Not to mention that ghost? The snow woman in a kimono? And my dreaming of her the same night you painted a picture of her?"

"I don't know, Daria, I just don't know. You know how the creative mind works, you sit down and start to write or draw, and things just seem to pour out of it. I don't think I dreamed about this, but I might not have remembered it if I had."

Daria glanced at her watch.

"Its been three hours! Can Kevin give me a ride home? And will you come with me?"

"Sure, Daria. I'm not leaving you in your hour of need. What else are friends for?"


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Chapter Seventeen**

Central Japan, 1183 A.D.

Oyasu shivered in her threadbare garments as she struggled through the snow, her wooden _geta_, or shoes, causing her to slip often. Her husband, Isaburo, a woodcutter, had taken a load of wood into the village, to trade for food during this harsh winter. Elsewhere on the island, the Minamoto and Taira clans, both branches of the Imperial family, were locked in a fierce war for control, and Oyasu thanked Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, that their poor village had not been dragged into it, as many others had been, to their sorrow. But when the great lords, and their faithful samurai fought, the poor could only bend like reeds in the wind, and pray they were passed by.

The small set of tracks she was following stretched on before her. She prayed to Jizo, the God of Children, that she found her little boy Muso, soon. The child had crept from the house to find his father, not knowing he had gone to the village. Oyasu knew she had to find him soon, before the setting of the dim sun, well aware of how cold the winter night would be for a such a little boy, no matter how warmly dressed he might be in his father's cast off clothing. But her Muso feared few things, and her stout little man often boasted of the things he would do, weaned as he was on the tales of fierce samurai, and noble quests.

Oyasu knew better. Like her husband and child, she had been born poor, and poor she would remain. She only asked the Shinto gods for good fortune and healthy children, and thanked them daily for her good man, Isaburo, who treated her as well as he could, and worked hard for her and little Muso. Childbearing was hard, with only the old women of the village to help, but she longed to give her husband many stout sons, and maybe one or two beautiful little girls.

The fresh fallen snow was beautiful in the light of the setting sun, its small crystals sparkling like jewels. But the lengthening shadows of the trees, and the rapidly chilling air, promised that the night would be bitterly cold. Oyasu loved to be in the forest in the day. It was very beautiful. But the night time was the time of ghosts, when the _kami's_ would walk abroad, the spirits of rock and tree, of lake and mountain.

The young woman shivered, not just from the cold. Small sounds came from the thick brush around her, sounds of light laughter, throaty grunts. Bells tinkled, just out of sight. Massive figures moved dimly around her, never close enough to be seen clearly. Oyasu trembled, but staggered on.

The landscape perversely grew brighter, as the _yuki-akari_, or snow light, grew in intensity, the ghostly glow outlining the dry bark of the leafless tress, and the thick boughs of the small pines. The trees shuddered in the flickering light, their branches seeming to twitch like skeletal fingers.

The dry snow crunched under her _geta_. The slight breeze picked up, ruffling her thin clothing. Faint cries attracted her attention, that came from the starry sky, the home of the gods. Oyasu feared to listen, as she might recognize a voice. An old saying told her by her own old mother came to mind: _All those who die by the snow and cold, become spirits of the snow and cold._

The small mocking noises from the brush faded away. A stillness filled the chill, crisp air. Oyasu feared to make the slightest of sounds.

A image appeared, floating over the drifting snow without a sound. A Lady, of long black hair and eyes filled with deep pools of darkness, came toward her, her long white robes of the finest silk soundlessly brushing the snow beneath her. Her thin arms effortlessly carried a heavy burden, a lump of cloth like that which swaddled a child in her arms. Her narrow pale face seemed burdened with an infinite sorrow, even as her crimson lips quirked in a faint smile which seemed almost cruel and mocking. She offered the bundle to the peasant woman.

Fearing the gift, Oyasu yet had to know if the bundle was her own small child, and her hands shaking, reached out and gently held it. She gasped. Sharp, biting cold raced from her fingers, up her arms, toward her heart. The small white face of the child in the bundle appeared, the eyes frozen shut an eternity before, but still alive, still aware. The Lady's hands reached deeply into the woman's body, pulling her spirit free of its mortal flesh, and flinging it into the cloudless sky.

Oyasu screamed soundlessly, hearing her scream repeated by the countless throng she was now a part of . _I would have bargained with you! Save my son!_ She faintly heard an emotionless reply._ Child, you had nothing to bargain with. You had already fallen. _A faint emotion now tinged the cold voice, the empathy of one mother to another. _Your son was never in any danger, he meet his father, and lives_. _Their grief is the price paid_. A deep sorrow was the last thing Oyasu was to hear from her. _There is always a Price._

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Quinn slowly woke up, her tired mind protesting, her stiff body aching. Her lips were chapped, her skin felt dry. As she sat up, brushing the hair out of her face, several strands broke off in her hand. Her long red tresses, her crowning glory, were dry and lifeless. She stared numbly for a few minutes at the dry strands of hair, unable to focus.

"Quinn, didn't you hear what I said? What did you want to order?"

Quinn shook her head, staring around her. She and the rest of the Fashion Club, sat around one of the tables at Chez Pierre, Lawndale's own fancy French restaurant. Each girl was wearing her best formal gown. Around them, the other diners were engrossed in their own conversations.

She stared at the other girls. In spite of their exquisite gowns, they were all looking haggard, gaunt. Their formerly soft skin was pasty, flaking. Their once well tended hair was brittle, with strands breaking off on their bare shoulders. Tiffany stared numbly down at the tabletop. Sandi was propped up in her own chair, her eyes glassy, her breathing coming in rapid pants. Stacy sat primly on her own velvet chair, her long brown hair flowing down her pale skin, her bright, ruby red lips frowning. Her gown, unlike the strapless sheaths the other girls were wearing, was loose and flowing, almost like fog. Brief and fleeting glimpses of her perfect body shone through. Stacy's face seemed to flicker through changes as well. Helpless fright became a cool contempt, followed by an infinite despair.

In place of her usual waiter, Daria stood next to Quinn's chair. Her face was at it's most immobile. Instead of her usual drab outfit she was dressed in a waiters tuxedo.

"Since Mademoiselle Morgendorffer seems unable to make a choice, might I make a suggestion?"

Quinn croaked out, "Please do."

"In that case, Mademoiselle, I suggest the Steak Tartare, a la Jake. It's our chef's specialty."

Quinn nodded weakly. Daria collected the menus, and said to Tiffany, "Mademoiselle Blum-Deckler, if you'll come with me?"

Tiffany staggered to her feet, and meekly followed Daria out the swinging doors to the kitchen. The formerly snug fitting gown hung limply on her now bony frame. The contrast of then and now confused Quinn.

_Isn't this Stacy's birthday party? But why is Daria my waiter? She despises this place! It must be a dream! But why did Tiffany have to go to the kitchen? Steak Tartare a la Jake? My poor dad loves to cook, but is the kind of man that can literally burn water. Why would I dream of him as a fine chef?_

Quinn shied away from meeting Stacy's eyes. Rather than the soft, almost doe-eyed look she normally had, her eyes were pools of darkness now. Sandi looked like a corpse, her hair white in places, falling out in rough patches. Her skin was in even worse shape than Quinn's, yellowed, and flaking badly. Only her quick, rapid panting showed she was still alive.

Daria soon returned, pushing a large cart loaded with covered platters. Their father, Jake followed her out of the kitchen, smiling broadly, looking immaculate in his starched white chefs uniform.

"Hi ya, kiddo? Ready for your old dad's best dish now, are you?"

"Isn't, isn't Steak Tartare just raw meat?", Quinn painfully forced out of her dry throat.

"Mademoiselle is misinformed. The flesh is simmered with smolletts and capers, for a taste most pleasing to the palate." Daria said tonelessly, as she placed a covered platter at each place, even at Tiffany's empty chair. With a flourish, Daria removed the cover, revealing a dish of slightly browned bits of flesh, still oozing reddish drops, before moving to each place, and uncovering the platters there.

Quinn gagged, but Stacy started right in on her dish. Quinn's arms and legs were so heavy that she was unable to get up.

"Quinn, I know you're hungry," Stacy said, "And Sandi doesn't look too good either. Are you sure you won't eat?"

Quinn shook her head in mute denial, and a sudden fear, as Tiffany's absence began to make sense .

'Where, where is Tiffany, Stacy?"

Rather than answering, Stacy spoke to Daria.

"I think we're ready for the last course, now."

Her face still immobile, Daria removed Quinn's platter, and replaced it with the last one, still covered.

"Please, Daria, Stacy, don't do this to me, please, stop this."

"Are you sure, sis?" Daria said, "What if it's the only way you can live? You have a bright future, you know, but it could all end right now." Daria's face lost it's impassiveness, became warm and concerned.

"Yes, Quinn," Stacy said, delicately wiping her mouth with the white linen napkin. A stray drop of blood ran down her chin. "It's only poor dumb Tiffany, after all. She has even less future than Sandi, here." she motioned to Sandi, still propped up in her chair.

"All you have to do is take one small bite, just a taste, and the future is still yours,"Stacy continued, offering a small bite of meat on her fork. "You still want to go to college, don't you? "

Quinn closed her eyes, tightly, moaning.

"This isn't real, you're not real, Stacy wouldn't do this, Daria wouldn't do this!"

Sandi stirred for the first time, her face still frozen, a deep almost echoing whisper from deep inside her shrunken body.

"Are you sure, child? Are you really sure? Don't forget, _there is always a Price_."


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Chapter Eighteen**

(Halloween Night, seven weeks earlier)

Sandi continued walking, glancing around herself in increasing fear and frustration. The cloudy sky gave little light, and streetlights were few, and for the most part, broken. She forced herself to not run, but kept a fast pace. The cold wind bit through her thin jacket. The old buildings on either side of her grew less and less, until to her surprise, the paved road stopped, ending in a dirt track winding through low trees. The wind rustled the tall uncut grass, and the dry leaves scattered on the ground.

_Where am I? I'm like, so totally lost! Mom hitting me got me so, so upset that I wasn't thinking at all! Mom blamed it all on me, asked me if "I enjoyed making her hurt me!" I don't want it like this. But is she right? Boy's haven't been calling like they used to, mom was right about that. Quinn and Stacy are still as popular as they were, and Tiffany is still dating, but..._

Not too many really talked to her anymore, outside of her friends in the former Fashion Club. Quinn and Stacy had expanded their social circle, but Sandi slowly realized that she hadn't. She wasn't sure about Tiffany. She was never sure about Tiffany.

_I really don't know much about Tiffany, do I? She's pretty and fashionable, and I know when her birthday is, and have been in her house. But where did she come from? She's one of the three people closest to me, and I don't really know her .And do I really know me, anymore_?_ I've heard the rumors floating around school about me_. _One of Quinn's followers_, _the Three J's_, _Joey, Jeffy,_

_and the other one, um, Jonathan?_ _called me "Captain Bitchonaught!" Brooke couldn't wait to tell me that! Stuck up little! But I thought people liked me. I've dated all three of those boys over the last several years. But most of the senior boys at Lawndale don't ask me out anymore, at least, not the ones I want to. Even Kevin Thompson spends all his time with Jane Lane. I don't think they're making out at all though, Kevin just seems to like being with her. Do I come across like that to people? A stuck up, frigid bitch? Am I that much like Mom?_

The patter of raindrops across the ground brought Sandi back to her current problem. She hurried over to a small grove of trees, to get out of the rain, but the leafless branches didn't provide much shelter. Her legs and feet ached, and she started to shiver from the rain and breeze. Glancing around for better shelter before she got soaked, Sandi spotted what looked like a rickety shed, and bracing herself against the cold rain, ran towards it, the tall grass brushing her legs as high as her knees. Her leg slammed into something hard hidden in the grass, and the slender girl went down with a cry of pain. Sandi twisted around, coming down hard on her rear. Her knee was on fire from whatever she had run into, and she nursed it for a moment, moaning in pain. Her fear, pain and frustration all come together in a hard knot, and she just screamed, "Damn it! God damn it all to Hell! What else is going to happen to me tonight!" The clouds whipping across the night sky continued their mad race against the half seen moon without giving her an answer.

Sandi reached for the half seen shape of what she had cracked her knee against, with the idea of using it to get to her feet, and hobble to the shelter of the shed. Whatever it was, it felt hard, like stone, and had a smoothly curving top. It was just out of her reach, so, favoring her aching knee, she crawled to it. The ground in front of it was oddly depressed through the uncut grass. As Sandi ran her hands up its smooth side, she could feel letters chiseled into the stone. The realization of what it had to be slammed into her already shaky mind, and she crawled away from it whimpering, only to bring herself up hard against a stone cross. She recoiled from it with a cry, only making out the phrase, "Beloved Daughter." She was crawling in an forgotten graveyard.

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Andrea Hecuba paused for a minute to catch her breath. The formerly plump Goth girl had been jogging every morning after she got off work at Payday, the discount warehouse store. Restocking on the early morning shift was rough, but it paid relatively well. Still, Andrea wanted more out of life, and jogging was part of her plan to get it. She was thinking seriously of joining

the Army, now, a idea that would have been unthinkable earlier. But for somebody without the grades to get a scholarship and go to college, there wasn't many opportunities here in Lawndale.

As she stretched her legs, ready for the second part of her run, she heard a quiet whimpering from behind the fence of the old graveyard, untended for years. She frowned. The local kids would mess up the town cemeteries on Halloween night, and then the cops always cracked down on any known Goths, on the mistaken idea that all Goths were Satanist's, holding rituals every Halloween. Several of her friends had gotten busted for stuff like that. She peeked into the tall grass, half expecting to see some dog or cat somebody tried to "sacrifice."

To her surprise, she saw a teenaged girl, curled up in front of a tombstone in a fetal position, softly crying. Her face was hidden in her hands. Her thick brown hair had grass stuck in it, and her light clothing was wet from the rain, and covered in mud and grass stains. Thinking the girl might have been attacked, she moved carefully into the thick grass to see if she could help. The girl didn't respond at all when Andrea knelt next to her, and gently shook her shoulder.

"Hey, you okay? Are you all right? Do you want me to call a cop or ambulance or something for you?"

The girl didn't answer, but Andrea's touch on her shoulder seemed to comfort her, and the crying slowly stopped. She just laid there, breathing deeply, as the sun slowly rose. Andrea stirred uncomfortably, hoping somebody would happen by to help her, unlikely as that was in this area. Had the girl fallen asleep? She moaned and rolled over on her back staring up at the sky. Andrea barely repressed a shriek. The girls eyes were wide open, but were balls of milky whiteness, with shadows flowing through them.

Andrea jumped to her feet, staring down at the tortured face. She barely recognized it as being Sandi Griffin's. Sandi muttered something very indistinctly, and Andrea jumped as she heard a answer from deep under the ground. Just a single word, that seemed to come from the core of the world.

"Agreed."

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Jane and Daria stared at Andrea's white face as she finished her story. They were sitting in the snack bar section of Payday. Andrea had taken her lunch break to talk to her two acquaintances from high school.

Daria finally said, "And then what happened?"

Andrea gulped, and sipped some water from a glass.

"After I got done biting my lip and having a heart attack? I sure as, well, I couldn't stay there, so I helped her up, and walked her away from there. I mean, I'm used to spooky things, I've got friends who are into all kinds of weird stuff, you know, psychics, vampirism and other things. But it's one thing to talk about it, and pretend to be a witch or vampire with your friends. Her eyes were the absolute real thing! And that voice, I'll remember that voice till the day I die!"

Daria said thoughtfully,"But you couldn't hear what she was saying? And you don't know the, um, who or whatever answered?"

Andrea was still visibly shaken by her retelling. "No, I couldn't, and I didn't really want to. I know, it could have been some elaborate joke, but why?"

Jane cut in. "What did Sandi have to say about all this?"

Andrea shrugged. "Not a thing. Her walking got steady, and she just walked alongside me in a daze. I thought she might have been slipped something, Rohypnol or GHB at a party, and been raped. It happened to a friend of mine. But when we got to Main Street, she just stopped and looked at me, real strange. Her eyes still had that milkiness in them, but she could see just fine. She tried to talk, but couldn't make her words come out right. Finally, she said, "You're Andrea?" When I said, "Yes." She looked real confused, and then said, "Did **she** send you to help me?" I said I didn't know who she was talking about, and she went real quiet, and said, "I'd like to go home now." I called a cab from a payphone for her, and she drove away. She sent me a nice thank you card a few days later. And that's all I've heard from her since."

"That voice? "Agreed" is all it said?" Daria said curiously., thinking hard.

"Yeah, it sounded like that guy from Star Wars, you know? Darth Vader. But the voice was even lower than that, and sounded very, well tired. But it was still strong, in a way. Like all it had to do was shout, and it would crack open the world. I don't know why I thought that. But it's been in my mind ever since."

"Crack open the world," Daria said slowly. "Andrea, can you tell me where that graveyard is? Or show me?"

Andrea shook her head. "Sorry, I've got to get back to work now. But you know where that French Restaurant is? Chez Pierre? It's just in those thick woods there, away from the city."

Jane added. "Daria, I hate to bring this up, but your folks must be getting worried about you. You're several hours past the time you'd said you'd be home."

"Damn it! Well, at least it's a start. Where's our driver?"

Jane looked around, not seeing Kevin anywhere, and sighed.

"Andrea? Do you have a sporting goods section in here?"

After pulling Kevin from a riveting discussion of past high school football games with the clerk in sporting goods, who looked as if he wanted to sink out of sight just to get away from there, Daria was driven home. She stared out at the blowing snow they drove through, and piled up around the house. The wind gust's seemed to compete with each other in making bizarre shapes

that almost seemed to become real, before they vanished in a swirl of flakes.

"Want me to come in?"Jane asked.

Daria hesitated, then shook her head.

"No, Mom and I are going to be busy with Dad, and talking about what happened today. I'm not sure how much of this other thing, with you and Andrea to tell her about. She's already really shook up about Quinn and the other girls missing, and the supernatural element is something she's going to have trouble with, no matter what she saw today."

"I'm having trouble with it, and I only heard some dreams." Jane said quietly. "If Sandi did make a bargain, what did she make it with?"

"Not to mention, what is she paying with?" Daria replied.

"Oh, wow!" Kevin spoke up for the first time. "You don't think that Sandi might give her friends to that voice? Like human sacrifice?"

Jane and Daria glanced at him in surprise. Unlike his former loud self, this Kevin was very quiet.

But he had touched the heart of Daria's fears. The idea had been slowly growing in Daria's mind for a while. Daria was a voracious reader, and vivid accounts of the ancient practice of human sacrifice flashed through her minds eyes.

Jane stared at Kevin like she had never seen him before.

"How on earth do you know anything about that, Kevin?"

He shrugged. "Brittany liked to go to really bad horror movies. She'd really get scared, and afterwards, she'd be so hot, she'd..."

"Whoa, fella!" Jane said quickly, watching Daria's face turn from a chalky white to a beet red. "Too much information. Way too much information there! Remember what I said about really personal stuff?"

"To keep it personal?"

"Right!"

"Oops, sorree!"

Daria sighed. "That's okay, Kevin, I know you were just trying to help, in your own way, and I was starting to think of it. But Jane's right, too, personal information should be personal. If you want a really good girlfriend, she wouldn't like it if you said all kinds of stuff about what you did when you were alone with each other. Remember how Mack would look when you started to talk about what you and Brittany did together?"

Kevin thought hard. "He, uh, didn't want to know about it?"

"Right!" Daria _said. My sister's missing, I'm dreaming about ghosts, might have seen one, and I'm counseling an ex-jock on how to keep a girlfriend!_ _And not to mention my round table chat with the current candidate for the Betty Davis mother of the year award, Linda Griffin! How much more bizarre is my life going to get_?

Correctly interpreting the conflicting emotions racing across Daria's normally stoic face, Jane quickly said, "Kevin, lets let Daria go home and get some rest. Remember, Daria, you need any help, just call me."

After letting Daria climb out, Jane got back in the jeep, and she and Kevin drove away. Daria stood alone on the snow-covered driveway for several minutes staring at the disappearing taillights. Helen stood in the doorway behind her, too relieved at seeing Daria home to be very angry with her. Daria turned and trudged through the snow up to the door, staring down at the high drifts as if seeing them for the first time. Mother and daughter hugged tightly at the door, and closed it behind them.

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Sandi's mind was a leaf, blowing in the winter wind. All was darkness around her. Shrill cries filled the darkness, in languages known and unknown to her. Pleadings for help, cries of terror, the deep voices of men, the lighter voices of women, and the crying of children. None seemed to pay attention to each other, only to their own dialogues.

(It's not fair. It's not fair! Why me!) (Momma, where are you! It's scary here! I'm so cold, Momma!) (I was only away for a minute just a minute, and she was gone. Just gone!) (The rope broke! It wasn't my fault, you hear me, it wasn't my fault!) (Almighty God, preserve thy lamb!)

(Our Father, who art . . . ) (Help me, I don't belong here, I'm a good person, I really am!)

The pleadings faded away, becoming the howling of the storm, an eternal storm, that caused the sun itself to gutter like a candle, the planets to falter in their courses. Sandi's mind numbly took it all in.

Slowly, and so very far off, a point of light seemed to grow, a tiny picture, but perfectly clear. Sandi was looking down at the cabin she knew her body was in. She saw Quinn tossing in the grip of her nightmare, knew what that nightmare was. She saw Stacy walking through the snow outside like a sleepwalker, moving toward a strangely familiar figure. She saw Tiffany sitting next to her own comatose form. She tasted Tiffany's own flesh in her own mouth, bloody little pieces that she savored, chewing them slowly in her sharp white teeth.

Sandi saw her body open its eyes, staring mindlessly at the softly crying Tiffany. It sat silently up, moving with difficulty, but still unnoticed. Its jaw gaped open, and Sandi saw her teeth sink deeply into Tiffany's bare neck.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Chapter Nineteen**

Linda Griffin sat quietly in her study at home, the door closed. Mementoes of her life and career were arranged neatly on the polished wood. Her wedding to Tom, pictures of Sandi, Chris and Sam. A picture of Rosalyn Carter and Linda, posing after her interview with the former first lady. The crowning achievement of her professional life. A half empty bottle of Scotch was placed precisely in the center of the gleaming desk top. She toyed with the empty shot glass in her hand, watching the cut glass sparkle in the dim light. Carefully placing the glass down with her trembling hands, Linda unlocked one of the drawers on her desk, and digging through some concealing paperwork, pulled out a framed picture of two brown haired college-aged girls, sitting in a dorm room and making faces at the camera. One of the girls was a younger Linda, the other girl very plain, with a small mole on her left cheek.

-

**1970 Middleton College**

Patty Wells hummed along with the music on the radio as she brushed her shoulder length hair. Linda looked up from her textbook at her roommate and said, "Your date last night must have been good."

"Oh, Linda, it was great! Tom Griffin is the sweetest and smartest guy, and you've just got to meet him! He's the best dancer! And he's so thoughtful!"

"Not that skinny, redheaded beanpole?"

"Linda! You really need to get out more. You hardly date at all! You spend all your time studying or student activities!"

"Patty, your social life during college isn't going to help you get a good job. Your major and transcripts will do that. How are we women going to break the glass ceiling and take our rightful place in the world?"

"Wow, Linda, you're such a square! You always compete with everybody, and you never have any fun! Come on, let's go to the dance tonight, together! I'll even let you dance with Tom!"

-

**1971 Middleton College**

"That Tom Griffin is such a jerk! He's stood me up for the last time!"

"Patty, I'm sorry for you, I really am, but I've got to study for this test."

"Linda, my life is ruined! You could show some sympathy!"

"Patty, look, relationships are like everything else in life. There are winners and losers, and this time you lost."

"That's the most cold blooded way of looking at life I've ever heard!"

Linda shrugged, "Don't blame me if life is rough, Patty. It's a dog eat dog world, and you have to fight for anything you want."

Patty broke into tears and ran out of the room.

-

Current Day

_And I did win, too, didn't I, Patty Wells? You didn't know until our graduation that I was the reason Tom stopped seeing you, that he was marrying me. Tom was cute, going places, and he is a great dancer, who lets me help him make the decisions he doesn't always have the sense to make himself! Plain little Patty Wells. You were always so weak, so clueless I went thru Hell in high school_, _ignored by all the popular kids, considered a square by all the outcasts. Just because I liked to read and was shy! Well, I showed them! I interviewed the former first lady of the United States, Rosalyn Carter! If I hadn't gotten pregnant with Sandi, I would have been national!_

Linda ignored the tiny nagging whisper in the back of her head as she always had.

_But my career was already going downhill, wasn't it? The station management thought I was too shallow, too . . . abrasive. Jimmy Carter was already out of office, Rosalyn was yesterdays news. I wanted a baby as much as Tom did. Sandi was the cutest little thing, too, wasn't she? But I got nervous in being out of the spotlight, and I went into business management, thinking at least I'd still have a connection to national news. You fought your way to being the Vice President of Marketing at KSBC_. _But you've held that job for six years now without advancement_. _No matter what I do, the owner always talks about possible cutbacks, and the advertisers always whine about how much they have to spend, and want to spend even less. So I worked harder and harder, thinking all the time I and Tom were good parents, That first Sandi, and then Chris and Sam, had everything a child could ask for. Sandi always seemed so well behaved, so elegant. But then I found out that she was failing her classes, that about the only college she could get into was Middleton! She's weak, she doesn't have the guts I had, the drive to win! She's had life way too easy. Why didn't I pay closer attention to her? Now she's going to embarrass me by . . . dying?_

She buried her face in her handsher shoulders shaking.

-

Helen's hug lasted a long minute. She seemed to almost melt into her daughters shoulders. Daria was increasingly becoming aware of the toll being taken on her strong, in charge lawyer mother. Daria could feel her trembling. Daria half supported her mother into the living room, where she sat her trembling mother on the couch. Going into the kitchen to get her a drink of water, Daria was surprised to see her dad, Jake, sitting at the kitchen table, pouring over maps. "Daria!" he said. "Glad you're back!"

"Dad? What are you doing?"

"Just looking at these maps, kiddo. Map reading is one good thing I got out of that miserable military school my old man, damn his black heart! Locked me away in!"

Jake's fists clenched on the table, crumpling the edges of the map. He breathed heavily, staring at the tabletop. Daria held her breath, afraid that Jake was going to have another heart attack, He visibly calmed himself down, slowing his breathing.

"Sorry, kiddo! Just . . . have to focus . . . on Quinn, doctor said . . . control your breathing . . . you and your mother need the old Jakester now . . . " He gulped. "I...have to be strong, for you and your mother."

Daria looked at her father's fight for self control with mingled respect and pity, and restraining herself from making a smart quip, filled a glass with water, and took it back to Helen.

-Stacy had stood outside the closed door after closing it behind her for a long time, trembling.

_I don't want to die out here. Like I told Tiffany, I want to go to college, I want to date, I want to get married to somebody really nice who loves me. But the Snow Lady did something to me, gave me something. I'm not really sure any more what I am. I feel so strange, so strong and weak at the same time. I almost feel like I can fly, if I only knew how!_

_But the others! Sandi's dying, I can see that. Quinn and Tiffany are starving to death. It's almost funny, I can remember all the times when Tiffany would say "Does this make me look fat?" But we've all lost so much weight! We look like we've got anorexia. God knows that we've all been on some strange diets. But I can't pretend anymore, we're all dying, and I might be able to help save the others at least._

Stacy resolutely started to walk away from the cabin, not questioning the direction she took. Her shoes seemed to skim above the snowdrifts, barely denting the surface. With each step she took, a strange glow grew, outlining the leafless branches of the surrounding trees, seeming to come out of the blowing snow itself. The branches looked like bare skeletal hands, feebly twitching. Stacy held her head high, not looking aside. She could feel something growing inside her, her body changing in a thousand ways. The scent of cherry blossoms filled the chill air in an ironic contrast.

The howling storm outside the grove almost seemed to welcome her. Stacy found it harder and harder to remember her purpose, her thoughts of home, of her starving friends almost forgotten. Slowly, another thought grew in her mind. She was the snow and cold, born in spirit to take the lives of those who surrendered to her freezing breath. She lived for the deaths of men, such foolish men, who succumbed to her icy beauty. She took the lives of all she touched, but the death of men was her true, most important reason.

Stacy's mind reeled under this elemental onslaught, this almost primal hate. She also felt despair, the sorrow of a mother, eternally weeping for her dying child, woven into a dense web of emotion. Her steps never faltered though, and she wasn't surprised to see an opening in the high drifts surrounding the grove, that she took without hesitation.

The Snow Lady drifted in the wind above the massive drifts, staring at the approaching girl. Her long black hair flowed in the wind, framing her pale, delicate face. Her eyes were deep pools of darkness without light, her ruby red lips quirked in a cruel, yet sad, smile. The fine silk of her kimono flowed like clouds, revealing here a tiny nipple, there the curve of an ivory hip. Stacy gazed almost enraptured at the teasingly revealed beauty. The Snow Lady was a seducer as well as spirit, in her tormented soul lust was a partner to a cold and lonely death.

The thought of death stirred Stacy's memory of her suffering friends. "Please, if I become as you are, can I help my friends?"

Feelings of doubt flowed from the beautiful figure, images of sorrow and loss over long years crushed Stacy to her knees. She saw thousands of men and women dying in the snow, starving children crying. She saw men tempted beyond reason, throwing away their lives chasing the beautiful coldness standing before her. A brief flash of the **beginning,** a young woman in tattered, rich clothing fleeing a burning home into a howling storm, cradling her child in her arms . . .

The flow of images ceased abruptly, like the slamming of a door. Stacy knew that the Snow Lady hadn't meant to share the last image, that it was the deepest part of her soul. Stacy suddenly knew that the Snow Lady wasn't a part of Nature, like Mother Earth from a cartoon, but an undead spirit, a . . . _demon? _Was _that_ what she had been dreaming about, trying to bargain with? Feeling the coldness that filled her body and mind, Stacy realized she had made a drastic mistake. The Snow Lady drifted closer to her across the icy crystals glinting in the eerie light. Her icy cold hands cupped Stacy's face almost lovingly as their lips met. Stacy's body trembled, her every nerve ending pulsing with an almost electric cold fire and shook in an unholy ecstacy as her living soul was ripped from her body. The scent of cherry blossoms becoming an overpowering wave.

-

Tiffany sat huddled between a strangely quiet Sandi, and a moaning Quinn who was trapped in the depths of nightmare. She hadn't seen Stacy in hours. She glanced at her watch, the time and date blurring to her unsteady eyes. Waves of heat, cold, and nausea washed over her shivering, gaunt body. The watch hung loosely on her bony wrist, and she stared at it for long moments, trying to remember why the time was important.

Glancing at Sandi, she shuddered violently. The brown haired former leader of the Fashion Club had lost even more flesh than the other three. Sandi's formerly rich hair was dry, falling out in patches, with streaks of white. Other than a strained gasping from between Sandi's clenched teeth, the only movement Tiffany could see was from Sandi's belly, now swollen to an enormous size. Tiffany tried to look away, but was afraid to. What looked like clawing hands seemed to make an impression on the straining flesh, visible now that Sandi's blouse could no longer be buttoned over it. Suddenly all movement stopped. Tiffany stared at Sandi, and then choked down a shriek. Slowly, a small face appeared, pressing through the wall of Sandi's stomach. It was the face of a child, eyes and mouth closed.

As Tiffany shrank back against Quinn, she was terrified that the small face would open it's eyes and look at her. She shook Quinn, afraid to say anything at all, but the redhead didn't wake up, trapped in her own nightmare. Tiffany closed her eyes, clasping her hands together, crying softly. She heard the old wooden bed creak, the unsteady steps of something walking over to her. She felt dry, chapped lips, icy cold, touch her thin neck, a rough tongue rasped across her skin. She knew without seeing when the jaws gapped open wide, and only screamed when Sandi's teeth sank deeply into her flesh like an unholy kiss.

-

Tiffany's shriek ripped Quinn out of her nightmare. Quinn struggled awake, her tired mind and aching body not making sense of the sounds she was hearing, the shrill cries. Her eyes were blurry, but she dimly made out Tiffany laying on the floor, whimpering. Sandi held her down, gnawing on her neck, like a dog chewing a bone. Blood pooled on the floor under the two girls.

Quinn stumbled over to them, weakly pulling on Sandi's shoulders. "Sandi, wake up! Snap out of this! You're hurting Tiffany!" Quinn cowered back as Sandi stopped her attack on Tiffany and turned to stare at her. Sandi's emotionless face was like a mask, her eyes milky orbs, filled with drifting black shadows. Blood ran down her face, dripping on her jacket. They stared at each other for a long minute. Sandi's eyes suddenly flooded with a reddish tint, and her face still a blank mask, opened her mouth wide, her blood-covered teeth in plain view. Her impossibly long tongue snaked out of her mouth, and quite deliberately, licked Tiffany's blood off her chin. Quinn fell backwards as Sandi lunged at her. Quinn threw up her hands in a weak attempt to hold her off, then screamed as Sandi's teeth sank into her flesh, gnawing at Quinn's hand like a dog with a bone. Sandi crouched over Quinn, mindlessly chewing, Quinn feebly trying to push her away with her injured hand, until there was a sudden loud CRACK, and Sandi collapsed on top of Quinn.

Quinn hysterically pushed Sandi's limp body off of her, only to see a sobbing Tiffany standing over both of them, a broken axe-handle in her hands. Tiffany sank to her knees, her face white. Quinn crawled over to the other girl, choking at the wounds on her slender neck. Reaching under her own jacket, Quinn tore off a piece of her blouse, and tightly held it against Tiffany's wounds, trying to stop the flow of blood. It was all she knew how to do, and she knew it wasn't enough. The slick feel of Tiffany's hot, gushing blood was terrifying, and the metallic smell of it filled the cabin's musty air.

She looked frantically at the fallen Sandi, seeing the gash in the back of her head from Tiffany's blow. Sandi was motionless, and Quinn couldn't see if she was breathing or not. Tiffany's eyes were glassy, her skin felt cold._ Is she in shock_? Quinn thought. _What should I do? What can I do? Where the Hell is Stacy? I'm sorry, God, I didn't mean it like that! Please don't get mad at me! Oh, Sandi! What happened to you? Why did you attack Tiffany? Oh my God, did Tiffany just kill her? **What am I going to do!**_


	20. Chaptet Twenty

**Chapter Twenty**

**Island of Hokkiado, 672 A.D.**

Minokichi shivered as he followed his master, old Mosako the woodcutter, through the blowing snow. Every day they made the five mile journey to the forest near their village, to cut the wood the old man sold. A wide river stood between them and the forest, and the young man always enjoyed the ride across on the ferryboat. It was late in the evening when they approached the ferry.

A great snowstorm had come up, surprising the weather-wise old man, who had seldom failed to predict a snowstorm. When they came in sight of the ferry landing, they saw that it had been moored on the far bank, with the ferryman gone. "Come, Minokichi," Mosaku said. "We can not go back to the village now. We shall stay in the ferryman's hut." The two men stumbled into the small hut. There was no brazier to make a fire, but the two laid down on the bare earth floor, still dressed in their reed rain-clothing.. The old man fell asleep immediately. But Minokichi stayed awake, listening to the blowing wind and the hiss of the snow outside .wind. The tired young man slowly fell asleep.

His mind drifted though vague, unremembered dreams, until he was awoken by a fall of snow across his face.. He felt very cold, stiff, and was unable to do anything besides to turn his head toward the door. Shining through the cracks of the crude hut was a pearly white light, and in it, he saw the door slowly open, though he had barred it himself. A figure of a woman appeared at the door, the most beautiful woman the young woodcutter had ever seen. Her hair was black, long and silky. Her skin was as pale as milk, with lips as red as a cherry, and her eyes ... Minokichi shuddered. Her eyes were deep and empty pools of darkness. She stood there for a moment, staring at the two. She approached old Mosaku and bent over him, her face close to his. Her breath left her lips like a white fog, The old man started awake, staring at her with eyes wide in terror, his own warm breath being sucked from his frail chest. He literally froze to the floor, eyes still wide. She slowly turned toward Minokichi, floating above the floor. One corner of Minokichi's mind was able to see that she had no feet underneath her pure white kimono..She hovered over him, her icy cold breath like a blast of the coldest wind, and they stared at each other for a long minute.

Finally, she spoke, her thin voice like the hiss of the blowing snow outside. "Hear me, child of man. I had intended to take your breath, as I took that of the old man. But you are so very young and handsome. I will not kill you, as I have taken the lives of so many others. But hear me well! You must never speak of me to any others, or I will take your life as the words leave your lips!"

Her figure slowly faded away as he stared, until he could see it no more. The light from the snow outside vanished, as from a quenched flame.

The young man laid there, staring until he recalled her words. He fumbled in the dark before he found the hand of Mosaku, which felt like it had been carved of ice. "Master! Mosaku! Please answer!" Touching the old mans face, he traced his wide open, immobile eyes, and passed out in a faint.

He was awakened the next morning by the ferryman, who tended him until he could return to the village. Mosaku was buried some distance away, so that his spirit might not haunt the landing. Minokichi took over his masters dutys, becoming a respected member of the village community.

The year passed slowly, as time does for a young man. Minokichi, was walking back from the forest, a huge load of firewood on his back. The first few snowflakes of the new winter were falling from the grey sky. The leafless trees reminded him of old Mosaku's death the previous winter, and the young man thought once again of the strange dream he had, the beautiful woman who had slain his master. Hearing the scrape of a pair of wooden shoes on the hard packed dirt road, he looked up, to see a peasant girl, in threadbare robes walking beside him. She smiled shyly at him, and he gasped at her beauty, almost forgetting his manners. Finally, his voice came back to him, and he stuttered, "I beg your forgiveness! I did not mean to stare so rudely! I am Minokichi, the woodcutter of the village which lies ahead.

She answered quietly, as a modest woman should, but with a mingled hint of pride and sadness. For just a moment, Minokichi almost thought that here was no common peasant girl, but a great lady.

"Well spoken, Minokichi the woodcutter. My name is Yuki. I am going to Yedo, where I have family, and I wish to find employment as a servant."

They walked alongside each other for a long time in silence. The feeling that he knew this woman in some way nagged at Minokichi's mind. But her quiet, almost regal beauty calmed him, attracted him. Finally he said, "Yedo is still very far, and you should not have to sleep in the woods. Please, I beg you, come to my house, where I live with my mother. It will do her good to see a new face under our roof, and you may leave in the morning, refreshed and warm."

Minokichi's mother was charmed by the young maiden, and it was she who begged her to stay for just a few more days, seeing the light in her son's eyes when looking at this modest young woman. Minokichi finally married Yuki, and a long and happy marriage followed. Yuki never did explain about where she had come from, and Minokichi loved her so much he didn't ask. Yuki presented her husband with ten strong and handsome children. All were much fairer of skin than was normal. But even the pain of childbearing, and the hardships of a woodcutters wife never dimmed her beauty, and the other women in the village began to speak of her spitefully, though never openly, and in some fear. Still, when Minokichi's mother died, her last words were in praise of Yuki, and her eulogy was echoed by many of those in the district, whose wives felt some shame for their harsh words.

Late one night, after many years, during the fall of the first snow, Minokichi entered his modest house, to see Yuki sewing, the light of a paper lantern outlining her beautiful face. The night that he spent in the ferryman's hut came into his memory, and he spoke of it for the first time in thirty years.

"Yuki, seeing you like that, with the light shining behind you, reminds me of the night my master, Mosaku, died. A beautiful woman entered the hut, with the palest skin, dressed all in white, who floated like a cloud, killed him with her ice cold breath. I am sure she was some strange spirit of the snow and cold, but tonight, you seem just like her!"

Yuki put down her knitting, and looked at her husband steadily

"Oh, my husband, whom I have loved for these past thirty years, did not this spirit tell you that if you ever spoke of her, she would slay you as the words left your lips?"

"Why, yes, my wife, but how do you know that? I had not yet told you of that!"

"My husband, Minokichi, do you recall the meaning of my name, common as it is?"

"Yes, it means ... " Minokichi's words caught in his suddenly dry mouth, his heart hammering in his chest, "**Snow** ... !"

The hiss of blowing snow filled the cabin. A horrible smile filled the face of this woman whom her had lived, who had borne their children. She towered above him in the small hut.

"It was I, the Yuki-onna, who came to you silently that night, and killed your master! Faithless man, you have broken your promise to me, and I should slay you, and all who dwell here in the village. If it were not for our sleeping children all would die!"

Her face became still, impassive.

"Take good care of our children, woodcutter, for if they ever have cause of complaint by your hand, I will know of it, and return on a night when the snow falls!" She changed into a white mist, and shrieking in an unbearable pain, passed out of the hut through the smoke hole, never to be seen again. Minokichi never explained what had happened to her, taking good care of his children, and he never remarried.

* * *

Daria tossed restlessly in her bed. Even under a pile of blankets she was still cold. Ironically, the thick padding still on her walls made her room one of the warmest in the house. The power had been going on and off all night, interrupting the heat in the big house. Daria and her father had shut off the heat in any room which didn't have water pipes in them that they could. Helen had fallen asleep in exhaustion on the couch, and Daria had helped her dad take her up the stairs to bed. Daria knew better than to tell her high-strung father about the ghostly happenings she had experienced and heard. 

The day's events moved slowly through her sleepy mind. Linda's hating, hurting face. Her venomous speech about Sandi and her career. Sandi's ghostly, ghastly appearance in the bathroom mirror, her body gaunt, her belly swollen. _Swollen with what?_ Daria thought. _Nobody said anything about her being pregnant. Not that Quinn would have told me. She always liked to keep her friends and family separate. But still, Mom would have told me, and somebody would really have made a fuss about an expectant mother missing. Not that I could ever see Sandi Griffin with a baby. Wouldn't be too fashionable, after all_. _She'd be the kind to have a surrogate mother for the conception, and a nanny to raise the child._

_Now, Quinn and Stacy I could see as mothers._ _Quinn would be a lot like mom_, _totally in charge of everything. Stacy would be in a constant state of anxiety, worrying about everything under the sun. They'd really be a handful for any man that married them. I can **not** believe I just thought that! I can't even imagine Tiffany being married. It's so hard to get her attention! "Does this wedding dress make me look fa-at?"_

Daria shook her head, irritated with herself for her mental rambling. Reluctantly crawling out from under the bedcovers, she hurried down the cold hall to her parent's bathroom. Pointedly not looking at the mirrored medicine cabinet door, she reluctantly took one of her mothers sleeping pills, washing it down with a cup of water. She stood there, staring at the back of the cabinet door.

_This is silly. It's just a mirror. If I look at it, I'll only see myself. Red eyes, rumpled hair, and puffy face. Not exactly something I'd want to see in the morning, but a totally normal picture. But what if I do see something?_ _Sandi sure looked like a ghost to me_. _What do I do if I see Quinn? Would that mean she's dead? Nobody has ever proven the reality of a life after death_. _So am I hallucinating from fatigue and worry?_

Daria slowly reached up, and closed the cabinet door. Her own image stared back at her. Slowly an old children's rhyme surfaced in her mind. _Mirror, mirror, on the wall. _Did she really want an answer? The hateful next line came bubbling up from Daria's always rich imagination. _Is my sister Quinn dead, after all? _The mirror only showed Daria her own reflection It trembled slightly. She shuddered, backing away from the mirror, turned off the light, and went back to her cold bed.

As Daria approached her bedroom she slowed. The door to Quinn's bedroom was closed,. but she felt a cold draft blowing strongly under the door, like a window had been left open She hesitated for a long minute, then reached for the knob.. Had a window broke open from the wind? Daria stopped, staring at the door in the dim light. The varnished wood sparkled with frost. The faint sounds of sobbing came through the thick wood.

* * *

Stacy's body lay on its back on top of the huge drift of snow surrounding the cabin. Her long brown hair and loose clothing fluttered in the stiff wind gusting over her. Her arms lay by her sides, her legs were slightly parted. Stacy's lips were parted in a small O, the perfect picture of surprised innocence. Her eyes closed except for a small slit. Ice crystals sparkled over her now pearly white skin. A strong smell of cherry blossoms filled the air around her frozen flesh. 

The Snow Lady stood over her, her head bowed, her hands clasped in front of her, staring down at the young woman. She knelt down and gently brushed Stacy's hair out of her face, like a mother preparing her little girl to go outside. She had taken the lives of countless people, seduced many men away from their fellows, dancing half clad across the snow while they clumsily plowed through it, mad with lust for her porcelain beauty. But she still grieved for the women and children whose lives she plucked as a farmer would harvest grains of rice. This girl had bravely offered her life for her friends. Frozen tears glittered on her perfect cheeks.

Slowly, above Stacy's still body, a cloud was forming, a smoky pillar of icy mist that poured ever more strongly from her nostrils and mouth. It was untouched by the harsh wind that was whipping snow across her quiet form. It grew thicker and thicker.

* * *

Quinn sacrificed her cotton bra for a bandage for Tiffany's bleeding neck, thankful that for once she had traded fashion for comfort. The cotton cups stopped the bleeding completely, though Tiffany's face remained a pale white. Tiffany laid on the wooden floor almost motionless, only the rapid beating of her heart, and her faint breathing as a sign she was still alive. 

Reluctantly, her attention turned to Sandi, and she crawled over to her. Tiffany's blow to the back of her head had only torn open her scalp, and Sandi's hair was matted with blood. She turned Sandi over on her back, gasping with the effort, and dragged her over close to the stove. Sandi had discarded her own bra as her stomach had swollen, and Quinn used it to tie her hands together in front of her.

The smell of blood was still strong in the air, and Quinn was sickened by it. She was also eerily fascinated by the small pool of Tiffany's blood on the floor, glistening in the dim firelight. She thought of hiding it, soaking it up, but couldn't, its reddish gleam beckoning at her, attracting her.

Finally, she crawled over to it, unable to stand any more, her thin arms and legs trembling. She stared down into it, her own reflection, her now bony face staring back at her, her cheekbones in sharp relief. Faint ripples of movement flowed across the crimson surface. The thick metallic scent seemed to tug her down, her face getting closer and closer to the still strangely warm pool, almost steaming. Quinn licked her dry lips, her face lower and lower, closer and closer, to the reddish liquid.

Until finally, lapping like an animal, Quinn began to drink.


	21. Chapter Twenty One

**Chapter Twenty One**

Andrea woke up in her tiny bedroom as the power blinked off again and the noise of the heating fan whirred to a stop. The howling of the wind and the hiss of the blowing snow came through the thin walls of the economy apartment she lived in with her mother. _Not again! I need to get some sleep! That is, if I can even get to work in the morning. This snow is just not stopping for anything, and what little news we get when the cable is working isn't good for the sun to come out anytime soon_.

She burrowed back under her covers. _I wonder how Jane and Daria are doing with that stuff I told them? I wish I could have helped them more. Jane is cool, and Daria isn't too bad, though that sister of hers is a bit strange. The one time I ever talked to her, she was all desperate for some plastic surgery, and was practically begging people in the hallway at school to give her money for it. She even asked me for money, talking about solidarity. I still remember saying "_Aren't you even a little worried that there may be a hell?" _Though Stacy was never all that bad. I always wondered how she fit into that group. Somebody for the other three to boss around, I guess. I wonder if anybody will find those four? Car probably cracked up somewhere, and they got buried under a snowdrift. It's not like this is the middle of the Andes or the Himalayas, after all. If this storm ever stops, that is._

Andrea laid there, her eyes open. _But it feels, I don't know, different. Almost alive_. _I'm not into some supernatural stuff as much as some of my friends are. But this storm, you can almost hear words in the wind, see shapes in the blowing snow. _

Her last glimpse of Sandi Griffin came back to her. _Those eyes of hers still creep me out. I've heard some rumors around town that she's shown up at the hospital a couple of times with bad bruises_. _Is she being molested or abused? You wouldn't think on of those uptown_ _type families would have those kind of problems. Those brothers of hers are bad news, and I've almost never seen her Mom except a few times on KSBC_. _Sandi Griffin spending Halloween night in a graveyard?_ _A fancy costume ball maybe, but not a graveyard by herself_. _What did she get herself into there?_

_Just like there are good people and bad people everywhere, there are good and bad spirits in the world. Just what would a hurt, confused Sandi Griffin do to get back at somebody? This is making my head hurt! Thinking of the stuck up Queen of the Fashion Club as hurt, or needing help. I guess no matter what you have, you can still be hurt. I know how it feels to lose someone close to you. We lost Dad in that car accident five years ago, and it still hurts. Mom still cries in the night every now and then about it. _

The apartment building shook as another gust of wind hit it.

_All this is, so, what's that word? Primal. Primitive. Nature against Man. Is Man really on top of everything? Or do we just think we are? What do we really know about this world, anyway? I've seen all kind of horror and disaster movies. I've heard about earthquakes knocking down whole cities, tidal waves doing the same thing. There are all those diseases out there, and new ones almost every day. _

_I remember that Y2K party I went to, and the way everybody waited breathlessly at the countdown. When nothing happened, it almost seemed a let down. I wondered why then. Did we all think something bad needed to happen? Do we think we deserve it? Do we deserve it?_

Andrea laid awake the rest of the night, listening to the snow.

* * *

Daria stood there for a moment, staring at the knob on Quinn's bedroom door. It was pure white from the frost sparkling on it. An intense cold radiated from the knob and the wooden panel of the door. She stared at it in mingled fear, and a growing rage. Again! Her parents were withering from all this stress, Quinn was still missing, and now all this supernatural stuff! Daria abruptly turned, and ran into her own bedroom door which was just down the hall. Looking around her room, she spied her heavy Doc Marten boots sitting by her bed, and hurriedly slipped her feet into them, lacing them up tightly. Daria ran back out of her room, and up the short distance of the hall to her sisters bedroom door. The frost tinkled in the dim light, mocking her, daring her to pierce its secret.

Daria was normally a quiet, studious girl, who expressed herself in her writing, and an occasional witty, venomous remark. But the sheer frustration of all that had been happening, of their family bonds being ripped apart, just at a time when she had expected to be relaxing with friends and family tore at her. She braced herself on the hall wall, raised her leg, and slammed the heel of her boot into the door with a resounding crash that echoed through the quiet house. She kicked and kicked, deep racking sobs coming out of her chest, but no tears ran down her face.

Helen started awake in her king sized bed, while Jake snored next to her. A pounding came through the bedroom door which Helen had left slightly ajar, almost like somebody was trying to get in. She nudged her husbands shoulder, frowned when she got no response, then made a fist and punched him.

"OW! Son of a ... "

"Jake! Wake up! Something is making that noise! What if somebody's found Quinn and they're trying to let us know!"

Jake crawled clumsily out of bed while Helen grabbed her robe, and they hurried out of the room, only to see Daria kicking at Quinn's door with her heavy black boots.

"My God! Daria! Stop it! What do you think you're doing!" Her mother Helen said as she hurried down the hall, wrapping her gown around her, the belt dangling, shuffling in her house slippers. Her father Jake was right behind her, dressed only in his pajamas and his feet bare.

"Hey, kiddo, what's wrong? Are you having a nightmare or something? Oh my gosh! Helen, I think she's sleep walking!"

Daria stopped her kicking and spun to face her sleepy, bewildered parents.

"No, I'm not sleepwalking! It's happening again, Mom! Right now! It's in Quinn's room, just like the bathroom mirror at City Hall! We've got to get in there and find out what's happening!"

Helen's face paled.

"No, Daria, I can't face it again! Why are you doing this?"

Daria's rage turned into shock.

"Mom? You can't believe I would do something like this? Not now? This isn't a trick! Dammit, Quinn is my sister! My pretty bratty little baby sister! We might fight like cats and dogs when we're together, but I'd never really hurt her, and I sure as hell would not do something like this to anybody, not even Linda Griffin!"

Mother and daughter stared at each other for a long moment. Both women were breathing loudly. Helen stood with one hand against the wall for support, the other holding her robe closed. Her hair was still rumpled from sleep, her face pale except for the dark circles under her eyes.

Daria stood there panting, her loose night shirt billowing around her slender frame, fists clenched, her eyes wide, a look of desperate anger on her delicate features, her shoulder length auburn hair flying wildly about her head.

Her voice took on a note of pleading.

"Mom? Please help me? For Quinn's sake? I want her back as much as you do! I want her to see me graduate, and get married, and listen to her gripe about her husband, and her job, and . . . and ... !"

Daria sank to her knees, sniffling, her voice heaving with the emotion.

"I, I don't want to have to visit her, guh, grave once a year, just to bring a bunch of damn flowers, and, and . . . !"

Helen rushed forward, kneeling beside her daughter as Daria buried her face in Helen's robe, bawling like a baby. Helen wrapped her arms tightly around her oldest child, weeping herself, as Jake stood above them bewilderedly shivering in the cold hall.

Finally, Helen looked up at Quinn's door, and shouted in her best command, top dog corporate lawyer tone, "Jake! I don't care what you have to do, but I want that door open now!"

The confused man snapped to attention, shouted "Sir! Yes, sir!" in a brief flashback to his Buxton Ridge Military Academy days and dashed back up the hallway, presumably to get some tools.

"For Heaven's sake, Jake! Just knock it down!"

"Dammit, Helen, make up your mind!" he shouted back as he spun on his heels and ran back down the hall, squeezing past the two kneeling women. He yelped and jumped back when his hand touched the doorknob.

"Dad, don't touch the knob! Just hit it with your shoulder, like a football tackle!" Daria shouted.

Jake looked at Daria's white, tortured face, then set his shoulders and hit it midway up with everything he had. The door cracked and sagged. Jake braced himself, and slammed into the door again, and it broke completely. He stumbled into Quinn's room, swearing as his bare feet hit the ice cold carpeting, followed by a gasp, and then silence. Dead silence.

"Dad?" "Jake?" Daria and Helen said at the same time, staring at the black pit that was the doorway to Quinn's bedroom. The only answer was the hiss of blowing snow from outside. The hum of the house heater clicked off as the power died again and the dim glow of the lights clicked out. Mother and daughter clutched each other tightly alone in the darkness.

* * *

Quinn lay numbly on the floor where she had collapsed. The howl of the wind through the bare trees outside was almost soothing, now. The hiss of the snow outside was natural. The dim firelight flickering around the cabin highlighted different things. The wooden walls, the bare rafters. The unconscious Sandi on the other side of the barrel stove, though mercifully, her moving belly was mostly blocked.

The bitter sweet metallic taste of Tiffany's blood still coated her mouth It had tasted, **_good_**. She had licked her friends blood off a dirty, wooden floor, and she had liked it. She didn't understand what had made her do that. Her mind was so fuzzy, it was so hard to think. She was a fastidious dieter, eating cheese-less pizza, and carrot and celery sticks. Was what had happened to Sandi happening to _her_? Mr. DeMartino's paper on the Donner Party tragedy flared into her mind. How long had _they_ been lost? Quinn couldn't remember any more. Sandi had bitten into Tiffany's neck. Now she had lapped up Tiffany's blood like an animal. Where was Stacy? Did she really care anymore? She was so hungry! She stared over at Tiffany's unconscious form The slender Vietnamese girl was laying on her side, her pale face toward Quinn, her eyes closed. Her dream floated back into her mind, the choice Daria had offered her. She didn't want to die! But Tiffany was her friend! Modern people didn't eat each other just to stay alive!

Did they?

The Donner Part had to do it, in the winter of 1846.

Sailors adrift in small boats as late as the 19th century had done it.

Those Uruguayan rugby players marooned in a plane crash in the Andes mountains in 1972 had to do it.

"It tastes like aged beef," one of them had been quoted as saying.

"_There is always a Price."_

Sandi's ghostly words came back to her.

"_You a have a bright future, you know, but it could all end right now."_

Daria's plea now sounded.

"_All you have to do is take one small bite, just a taste, and the future is still yours,"_ Stacy continued, offering a small bite of meat on her fork. _"You still want to go to college, don't you?"_

"Yes," Quinn moaned, "but not like this. I want to talk to all of you on the phone, teasing each other about our dates and grades, hearing about all the things each of us are doing. I want to fuss with Sandi about fashion, study with Stacy, even laugh with Tiffany. **_I don't want to murder one of my best friends!"_**

Quinn hadn't realized that she had been muttering her thoughts out loud until she saw Tiffany's eyes blink open, gazing directly into her own. The two girls stared at each other for a long minute. Tiffany finally sighed, and closed her eyes again with a faint smile on her face, perfectly trusting in Quinn to watch over her. Quinn stared at her, slow tears leaking out of her eyes and running down to the rough wooden floor.

_She trusts me. Tiffany isn't the smartest person alive, but she trusts me. She trusts me with her life. She doesn't know what I've done, what I've been thinking about_. _That there is nothing so much on earth I want to do now, but lick her blood off her skin._ _And maybe, just maybe, take a little ... bite? And if I ever even started to do that, I might not stop? God help me, please, oh God help me ... _

A vague errant image of Tad and Tricia Gupty drifted into her mind's eye. Quiet, cute, respectable kids she had enjoyed babysitting. They were holding hands, dancing around, singing a nursery rhyme:

Crazy Lady, Cannibal Quinn!

Don't ever let her catch you!

Crazy Lady, Cannibal Quinn!

She'll eat you if she gets you!

Was that going to be her epitaph? The monster in a children's rhyme? Locked up in a straitjacket, with a gag in her mouth, so she wouldn't bite her keepers, howling at the ceiling of a padded room, like the one she had always teased Daria about living in? Would Sandi be in the next room screaming back at her? While Stacy haunted the night winds forever alone in the snow? And would be rescuers gathered up Tiffany's scattered, gnawed bones for a decent burial?

Bones she and Sandi had gnawed? Why was all this happening? What was making it happen?

Quinn weakly held her hand up between her eyes and the flickering firelight, saw the thin glow through her flesh outlined around the core of her bones. Flesh and bones, a little bit of flesh, that's all she was. Once you took away the flesh, just dry, bare bones, that soon crumbled, and then?

Quinn's thoughts faded away, as darkness overtook her.


	22. Chapter Twenty Two

Sandi Griffin floated in the void, surrounded by the shouts and screams of her unseen companions. Her bare body felt like a dried leaf caught up in a raging wind. Gusts of heat, and ice cold winds blasted her cringing flesh. The roaring of the eternal storm blowing between worlds was the only other noise. A faint tugging was pulling on her comatose spirit, a feeling of something undone, a responsibility she still had. The dim images of three young women flickered in her mind's eye, displacing the constant images of her disappointed, angry mother screaming and striking her over and over.

Sandi's screaming had joined that of the others being blown in the darkness of the great Abyss. "I'm sorry, so sorry! I love you, mommy, don't hit me anymore! Sam! Chris! Why do you hate me so much! I'm your sister! Dad! Why don't you ever protect me! Are you as afraid of me as you are of Mom! Why is all this happening! I'm sorry I'm so stupid! I'm sorry I was so mean to every body! Quinn, Stacy, Tiffany, I didn't mean to drag you into this, it wasn't supposed to be this way, they lied to me! They all lied to me! No, leave Quinn and Tiffany alone! Don't make her do that, damn you! She's my best friend! You said I'd pay, not anybody else! You were just supposed to make Mom love me again! That's all I wanted! That's all I ever wanted!"

Flickering images now appeared in Sandi's mind: Stacy's slow death out in the snow, her soulless body's attack on Tiffany, and then Quinn, and finally, her weeping mother, alone in her den, mingled fear and love for Sandi warring with humiliation of being exposed as an abusive mother. Then even more torments. Police investigations. Sandi had committed suicide, and killed her friends. Her dad accused of molesting her by her mother to cover herself, her brothers too afraid of her mother to tell the truth. Tom Griffin sent to prison, while Linda got famous as the poor grieving mother. Their bodies found. Quinn and Sandi's murder of Tiffany revealed. The gruesome details of their cannibalism of their friend. Quinn and Sandi dammed as supposed lesbian lovers into murder and human sacrifice. Stacy missing. Probably the same thing was done to her. Body never found.

Their principal Ms. Li, mourning publically, using the tragedy for more funding for the school, for grief counseling. The little plaque which was all the recognition their club had ever gotten sold on E-Bay. Its brief message: We Mean Well, used as the title for countless books and movies. " "We Mean Well," what evil message is hidden behind these innocent words? Tonight, the sinister story of the Fashion Club of Lawndale High, of what happened when sadistic Sandi Griffin and Quinn "Cannibal" Morgendorffer kidnaped, murdered, and ate their friends, Stacy Rowe, and Tiffany Blum-Deckler! Our top story tonight, on Sick Sad World!"

No more life at all. Just floating in the darkness, forever alone, surrounded by screaming and crying, people she could never see or touch, her hands forever reaching out in the darkness for something she was afraid to find. It was all her fault. She deserved to be here. She was where she had always belonged now, alone. No one to boss around here. No one to be hurt by her cruel remarks. No more humble Stacy to be put down by her and Tiffany. No more Tiffany being so afraid to not fit in that she'd agree with whoever seemed on top. No more . . . Quinn.

She and Quinn were so alike. But where Sandi tried to control with sheer determination, Quinn would use her beauty, her persistence. Quinn was gorgeous, fashionable and instantly popular. She seemed to have it all. But Sandi had known what went on behind the scenes, the compromises you had to make not only at home, but with family and friends. The constant acting of your role on the stage. The fear of being left out if you didn't constantly agree with the others, until you wondered if anybody actually thought anything at all. Always, the fear of being left out, of being ignored and alone. Like she was alone now, forever and ever, while her friends died, and her dad got blamed for what she and her mother had done to each other. Her brothers would grow up, and do the same things to their wives and children, and it would go on and on and on.

Would Sam and Chris ever admit to the world she was their big sister? Weren't families supposed to care about each other? Would anybody miss her, Sandi Griffin at all? Or would they just be condemning her for Quinn and Stacy and Tiffany? Helen, Quinn's mother certainly would be. Sandi had always been so jealous of Quinn's mother, had always envied how much she openly cared about her daughters, even Quinn's weird older sister, Daria.

The Fashion Club had done a sleep-over at the Morgendorffer's house once. Helen had welcomed them all, even though Sandi's own mother didn't like her, and done her best to make them feel at home. Sandi had even tried to give her a make-over, but had gotten so nervous she had really messed it up. Quinn was sure she had done it that way on purpose, but she hadn't. She had wanted so hard to make Helen like her! And she had messed up. Again. Like she had messed up now. Forever helpless. While Quinn and Stacy and Tiffany suffered and died.

Stacy Rowe. Her oldest friend. She had always been there, ever since Fifth Grade. She remembered how they had meet, back then.

* * *

Twelve year old Sandi Griffin hustled down the hall behind the teacher as the older woman took her to her new class. This was the second school they had been to this year, since her mom had lost her job as network anchor, and desperately chased after any TV station that would hire her. Sandi didn't understand at all. Her mother was pretty and smart! She should be on TV! It wasn't her mother's fault that Sandi had gotten so depressed after the last time she had changed schools that she had failed a grade at the last school. But why oh why did she have to go to a new school now, when she was like this, and in the middle of the school year! Everybody was going to laugh at her!

"Class, this is Alexandra Griffin. Her family has just moved to Lawndale, and she will be with us the rest of the semester. Now Alexandra, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?"

Sandi moaned as she heard the new teacher pronounce her real first name. She absolutely hated to be called that. She mumbled, "Hi, my name is really Sandi, and we just moved here ... "

"Now, Alexandra, dear, don't mumble, and don't be shy. I don't want people to be using nicknames in my class, so your name will be Alexandra while you're in this room. Now this time, I want you to clearly and distinctly tell the class your real name, and why you came here."

_Well, here it comes,_ Sandi thought unhappily.

"My name is Alexandra Griffin, and my family moved here to Lawndale so that my Mom could work at the TV station, KSBC. My Dad is an accountant and works with all kinds of figures. I have two little brothers, Sam, who's eight and Chris, who's six."

The moment Sandi had started talking a hiss had risen up in the corner away from the teachers desk, a muffled snickering. The teacher glanced that way in irritation, and the noise died out.

"Miss Griffin, what were you doing to have people make that noise!"

Sandi blushed furiously, staring at the floor.

A brown haired girl with pigtails raised her hand reluctantly.

"Yes, Stacy, what is it?"

"I'm so sorry I laughed, Miss Smith, but she's got the biggest braces I've ever seen!"

With that the whole class stirred in obvious discomfort.

The teacher bit her lip.

"Oh, dear! I'm sorry, Alexandra! Why didn't you tell me? Now, class, there is nothing wrong with a girl or boy wearing braces. Peoples teeth sometimes just grow wrong, and people have to wear braces so that they'll grow straight again. Now, Alexandra, I want you to go sit behind Stacy there, in that empty desk."

Sandi hurried to her new desk, trying not to make any eye contact with anybody, keeping her mouth firmly closed. The teacher felt genuinely sorry for the new girl. She knew what her charges were like. She had drawn attention to the shy, gawky girl, with the very big braces, and now the pack would circle around, scenting weakness. Anything she did overtly now would just make things worse. Teaching kids seemed a lot like taking care of a wolf pack at a zoo, she thought, and not for the first time. _I should have just been a zoologist!_

* * *

The big brick house shuddered in the strong winds. The quiet ticking noises of the cooling timbers, the creak of wood against wood, an occasional sharp crack, was all that was heard. That, and the quiet feminine sobbing coming from down the hall where the door to Quinn's bedroom was lying in pieces on the floor, after Jake Morgendorffer, husband to Helen, father to Daria and Quinn, had broken it down minutes before, stumbling into his daughters room. He hadn't said a word since he had disappeared into it, the power failing at the same time.

Daria, kneeling a few feet down the hall, desperately clutching her shaking mother, had only let out a startled "eep!" when the lights had gone out. Both women had been wishing desperately for the lights to come back on, but long minutes had passed, and nothing happened. Helen tugged at Daria's sleeve, and she quickly followed her mother down the hall on her hands and knees to her parents bedroom. Leaving the danger felt worse than facing it. Daria could feel the carpet under her bare hands, expected at any moment for something to leap on her back, but nothing did.

Once there, Daria had quickly closed and locked the door behind them. Helen tried both the regular phone as well as her cell phone, damning both services very quietly when she only heard dead air. Meanwhile, Daria had fumbled around in her parents closet, and Helen heard a metallic rattle. Helen meanwhile had found her purse, and the small flashlight she kept in it for emergencies, as well as her small can of pepper spray. Flicking the light toward Daria, she wasn't surprised to see her standing with one of her father's golf clubs gripped tightly in either hand.

Mother and daughter looked at each other for a long moment. Helen thought, _My own Warrior _

_Goddess! My Athena!_ _Sprung from the forehead of Zeus! Spear in one hand, shield in the other, dressed in her robes of white with the owl of wisdom on her thin shoulders!_ The vision held for a long moment, until Daria said, unknowing what had taken place in her mothers mind just then, "Let's go get Dad and Quinn."

* * *

Tiffany lay there on the cool, gritty wooden floor. She felt completely numb by everything happening to her, so helpless. She wasn't really a stupid girl, she just liked to drift, to fit in where she could, knowing that things would happen to her no matter what, and that she couldn't avoid them. But now things were happening, really bad things, and they were hurting her all the time.

Stacy had left hours ago, and Tiffany knew she was probably dead or worse. She mourned for her friend. Sandi's attack on her had terrified her, and during Tiffany's brief bouts of consciousness she had fought to regain her center, her calm place. It wasn't power yoga, like Quinn did, but a meditation taught her by her mother a long time ago, to help protect her in this new land that she had been born in.

Tiffany had recognized the look in Quinn's eyes. It had been pure animal hunger. She had seen boys look at her like that, too, when they didn't know she could see it. Her mother had called it animal lust. 'Don't ever let them see you show fear, Tiffany," she had said sadly to her little girl. "It makes men ... animals." Tiffany knew without having to ask it was knowledge born of grim experience. But Quinn had been staring at her neck, and the bloodstained makeshift bandage when she had done it. Tiffany had felt the waves of cold, and the pulsing raw hunger from the thing in Sandi reach out to her when that thing in Sandi's body attacked her. It had used the hunger in Quinn to enter her. Sandi had been motionless, silent ever since her attack on the others.

Vague stories of ghost's and blood drinking vampires drifted though her tired mind. She couldn't leave, she knew. She was too weak, now. Quinn was strong, though. Quinn had always been strong, like Sandi had been, and then Stacy had become. But Stacy had turned into one of the monsters now, and so had Sandi. The thing in Sandi needed death to grow. Death and blood. Quinn was still fighting. Tiffany knew she would fight to the end. But now, she was so tired, so weak. _I really wish I could help Quinn. She's always been so nice to me. But I just need to sleep now, just a little bit. _Tiffany's confused tangled of thought slowly unraveled, quieted. Her last clear thought was of the look in Quinn's eyes, the raw hunger.

* * *

Stacy awoke in darkness, completely confused, unable to move or see anything. She sensed massive physical pressure against her whole body, against every part of her prone figure. Everything felt cold and damp. She could feel different things against her bare skin, smooth, bare surfaces, like ... _rocks_? The palms of her hands and the soles of her feet could feel a coarse grittiness against them, like dirt or clay, maybe. Was she in a cave or something? What was going on? She heard the dull hiss of snow blowing far above her, the trickle of running water somewhere close.

Memory slowly started returning to her. Their being trapped in the cabin, Her own slow, (was it a ... seduction?) by the Snow Lady. Stacy felt so hollow, so ... empty. Like an eggshell with nothing in it. Slowly a deep fear grew in the helpless girl. _Did she take my, my soul? I wanted to help the other girls! How can I help them like this! What did she do to me? Where am I, anyway?_

Suddenly, Stacy's first vision returned. The Snow Lady roaring above the winter landscape like a storm, while her human mortal bones were buried deep underground. The memory she had received from the Snow Lady, of a very human young woman, in tattered rich clothing, fleeing

a burning house in a howling storm, holding her child in her arms, a air of betrayal choking the air as much as the heavy snow had been.

_Somebody lied to her, she had to run away, out in the snow, with her baby in her arms, a long time ago. But where am I now?_

Suddenly Stacy knew. She had taken the Snow Lady's place. She could do all the Snow Lady, the_ Yuki-Onna_, could. She could soar to Lawndale, feet in the clouds, and cold death in her white hands, bearing seduction and betrayal, slaying all caught in winter's icy grip..

_I don't want to kill anybody, I just liked the power, the beauty of it all! I could have helped my friends, then just left, not hurting anybody! I never wanted to be a monster!_

But the Snow Lady was both, monster and human equally, living as a woman, haunting the snowy emptiness of the world, and somehow, her human part had died, out here in the wilderness. Stacy had just replaced her in her grave, forever aware, never dying, able to see and feel all.

Stacy started to scream.


	23. Chapter Twenty Three

**Chapter Twenty Three**

If you assume concurrent with end of season 2, Sam would be 14 and Chris 12 right after IICY.1

Twelve year old Chris Griffin prowled carefully through the big house, looking for his brother Sam. His mother was locked up in her den, and his father was outside shoveling the walk, during the middle of the raging storm. One look at his father white, pinched face had made Chris keep his mouth shut on any smart remarks. After that press conference where Helen Morgendorffer had ripped apart the mayor, the two boys had sat quietly in awe of her technique. They both had a major crush on Quinn, their sisters redheaded friend, and former vice president of her stupid "Fashion Club." But Sam had been strangely quiet once they had gotten home, refusing to wrestle with him, or play any video games.

Finally, Chris decided to check their sister's bedroom. Sam was laying on the carpeted floor next to the bed. He had pulled up the pink bedspread, and his head pillowed on his arm, was looking underneath it. Chris flopped down on the floor next to his brother, peering intently, and at first could see nothing. As his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, he made out a white blob, and hesitantly reached out for it. A rasping snarl and hiss made him gasp and roll away.

"Come on, Sam, it's just Sandi's stupid cat!"

The long-haired white Persian cat, Fluffy, maintained his position under the head of Sandi's bed against the wall, keeping his wary green eyes on the two boys, who had often tormented him with firecrackers and Super Soakers. Sam stayed down on the rug, still staring at the nervous animal.

"Chris?" Sam finally said.

"Yeah?"

"What if Sandi never comes back?"

"What? What are you talking about, Sam?"

Sam remained on the floor, still staring under the bed.

"What if she never comes back? What happens to us, to Mom and Dad?"

Chris shrugged.

"Thing's will just go on, I guess. Mom and Dad will go back to normal. I guess they'll save some of her stuff, pictures and things, give the rest away. Probably get rid of the cat. Mom always did say he sheds all over everything. Never did figure out why Sandi liked it so much, as fussy as she is about her clothes."

Sam rolled up and stared at his younger brother. Chris was surprised to see his eyes blinking rapidly.

"Do you know what Mom's doing right now? She's crying!"

Chris gaped in disbelief.

"Mom? No way, man! You're crazy! Mom's tough as nails! Maybe Dad, but not Mom!"

"Yes, Mom! Didn't you see Quinn's Mom and sister today, the way they were?"

'Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with this/"

Sam sighed in frustration, trying to express himself to his little brother.

"Look, we both think Quinn is hot, right?"

"Well, yeah!"

"Well, if she thinks Sandi is good enough to be her friend, what about us? Sure, brothers and sisters fight all the time, but do you see other girls going to school with a lot of bruises like Sandi was? Did Quinn?"

"Hey, don't blame all of that on me. We both did that stuff, and so did Mom!"

"Well, maybe we were wrong, and so was Mom!" Sam shot back. "Sandi was a stuck up pain, but we didn't need to hurt her like that! Kicking and bruising her until she'd be crying! Remember that time she fell down the stairs, and broke her leg because we were fighting? What if it had been her neck!"

Chris hesitated, confused.

Sam pressed on.

"Sandi would've been dead! It would have been our fault. Sandi might be a little taller than we are, but we're both a lot stronger than she is. If one of us ever did marry Quinn, would you do that to her!"

"What? No way, Quinn is great!"

"Well, you really think Quinn would get off on seeing Sandi get hurt?"

Chris stared down at the pale blue carpeting in his sister's room. Finally, he said,"No, they're friends. Quinn came over here all the time, to help Sandi get back into shape, after she broke her leg. We just made jokes about how fat she was, but Quinn helped her out."

Chris stared down at his brother, while Sam stared steadily back up at him. In a weak voice, Chris said, "But, what about the cat?"

Sam rolled back over, still staring at his sister's pet.

"I just think she might like it if she knew he was okay, you know?"

* * *

Tom Griffin throw himself into the backbreaking labor of shoveling the sidewalk and driveway. His shoulders soon burned with the effort, but there was something satisfying in the intense physical labor, that he didn't seem to feel any more from the rest of life.

_I should have married Patty Wells. She was always so happy to see me, and such a good sport. Still, there was that mole ... . _

Still, he had married Linda. She was so forceful, and she was a real tiger when they were alone together, that it was easier to get along with her by letting her be on top when she wanted to be. Which, he admitted to himself, was all the time.

But the way Sandi had been looking at him lately tore at him. There was the look of someone who had been let down, been betrayed by the one she trusted most. Sandi had always seemed so much like Linda, so forceful and commanding, that he had never thought she needed any help with anything. But when her fights with Linda had turned physical, Sandi seemed to become a helpless little girl. She hadn't once struck back at her mother. And now her brother's were doing it to her, too. Sandi had always dressed so fashionably, and the weather had been getting colder. It had taken him a while to figure out why she was wearing long sleeves and pants. But still, he lived there, too! He should have noticed something, shouldn't he?

Linda had been so frustrated lately too at work. She came home seething in fury, her manner colder and colder. The few times they had been intimate had been almost scary, the way Linda had thrown herself into the act almost like an assault.

Had Sandi run away? It didn't seem possible, but still, she had been so miserable lately. But where would she go? Sure, she had a few friends, but they had disappeared with her too. Tom honestly couldn't think of them being close enough to leave their lives for Sandi's sake. Had she committed suicide, and taken them with her? Tom had been increasingly glad that their family didn't own any guns. Linda had never been interested in them, and Sandi had been too fashionable for them. They both sought control by other means.

But Sandi had seemingly crumbled after last summer, tried to be nicer, and her daughters failures had seemed to point out toLinda of the faults in her own life. Her sheer hatred of Helen Morgendorffer had become almost an obsession, and Sandi's closer ties to Quinn had almost become a insult to his stressed out wife.

The howling wind suddenly doubled it's raw fury, knocked the worried man to his knees. Tom gasped in the frigid blast, feeling the drifting snow rising up around his hands and ankles, almost trapping him like quicksand. Using the snow shovel as a prop, he staggered to his feet. The wind almost seemed to take a personal interest in him, slamming him again and again. He staggered towards his now barely seen house. The snow drift's danced under his feet, rising up in strange cones, like small tornadoes. The terrified man felt almost helpless, like a giant had reached down from the sky to crush him in it's cold grip.

* * *

Jake slammed his shoulder into the cracked wood of Quinn's bedroom door a second time and it broke under him. His bare feet stumbled on first the ruined door, and then the frost-covered bedroom floor. He swore, the frost cold on his feet, looked up and gasped. A swirling column of snow filled the center of Quinn's bedroom, it's soft white glow reflecting off the ice crystals that sparkled over every square inch of his daughter's formerly pink bedroom. Off to one side of the glowing, swirling column was Quinn's three paneled mirror screen. Jake fell to his knees as he saw what was reflected on the panels. A starved, gaunt Quinn, licking something off a floor, while a haggard Tiffany looked on hopelessly. Sandi Griffin floated in space curled up in a fetal position, sobbing, and screaming, her bare emaciated body showing every bone. Stacy Rowe, seemingly buried deep beneath the earth, unable to move, but still alive, and able to scream.

Jake stared in revulsion at the horrific images. He was vividly reminded of the pictures he had seen from World War II, when the Allies had overrun and liberated the concentration camps, of men, women, and children showing every bone under their mostly bare skins, of pits of the dead that looked exactly like the pitiful living survivors. But this was his little girl! This was little Quinn, whom he had helped to teach how to walk, who he had rocked to sleep. She had grown up into a beautiful, confident young woman, ready to go to college, and take on the world.

But now she was in Hell, to her fathers disbelieving eyes. How? Why? His daughter didn't deserve this, and neither did her friends. They were just kids, still in school! How could something like this be happening? Who was doing it to her? Damn it, not while her father could do something about it! He balled his fists and started forward.

And then She stepped out of the column of snow. Her long black hair flowed down her slender frame, like black silk. Her narrow, delicate features were framed by the hair, highlighting the dark pools of her eyes, the vivid red of her lips. Her white kimono seemed to be made out of mist drifting across her porcelain perfection, the exquisite curves of her petite figure, the soft mounds of her small breasts.

A wave of desire crashed into Jake, knocking him to his knees. He wanted to crawl after this, this Goddess, beg her for the slightest of favors. For a brief moment, he would have worshiped her. He knew she expected him to, demanded it.

But the frost sparkling in the bedroom (Quinn's bedroom?) suddenly paled. Quinn! His little girl! Quinn needed her old man, her dad. His daughter. Helen's daughter. Helen Barksdale. The woman he had married in 1975, and been madly in love with even before. Jake's love for his often demanding wife had been a constant point in his life, drowning out the miserable childhood and poor, often hostile, relationship with his father.

But he had never doubted Helen's love for him, or his for her. The deep-seated passion they shared, that had shored him up during the darkest of times, during his steady estrangement from his parents, his often bad jobs, his failures with clients and friends. Helen was always there to be leaned on, sometimes too much so, but she was always there. Now _she_ had needed _him_. Helen and Daria both needed him, for Quinn's sake.

And he had almost failed. Because of this, this, . . . thing, in Quinn's bedroom! Jake had never been the smartest or bravest of men, but he could dimly sense some strange connection, between this ghostly apparition and his daughters and her friend's disappearance. Raw desire and lust flooded his soul, warring with his deep rooted, basic decency, of the loving husband and caring father that defined his often confused soul.

The _Yuki-Onna_ had stood quietly, almost as if she could see the deep-rooted conflict in this man's soul. This man was the red-haired girl's father, the leader of the four victims in the cabin. Dim memories of her own parents surfaced in the quiet stillness of her mind, disturbing her, brief memories of the short time she had spent with her own living son, when he and she had still been alive, before she had paid her own price, made her own bargain, not with the Gods and Goddess's of old Japan, but with deeper, elemental forces.

But she was old. So old that she could barely remember a time when she had walked through snow, not floated above it. When her only child had nursed from her warm breasts, not become a frozen lure of death and horror. When the mere touch of her hand had brought comfort, not a soulless, frozen death, and eternal solitude in the starry skies.

Jake crawled toward her, his body colder and colder, his breathing more and more strained. He couldn't feel his hands and feet anymore, could feel his straining heart pumping in his chest.

_See, old man! I'm doing this! Your good-for-nothing son is going that last mile! I'm going to save my little Quinn for Helen and Daria! My little girl! You never came to our wedding! You never saw how much better our marriage was than yours and Moms!_

Jake's steadily blurring vision showed him the still figure before him, gazing down on him, almost tranquilly, with a sad, yet cruel smile. The contrast of her red lips, with the otherwise stark white and black which composed her image vividly reminded him of blood and snow. Whose blood on the snow? The image flashed again into his mind, Quinn kneeling, licking something off a wooden floor, while Tiffany lay nearby, looking on, her neck covered with a rude, red-stained bandage. Jake suddenly knew what Quinn had done, could feel her mingled revulsion and excitement, her fear of becoming . . . what?

Jake knew it was only a few feet from the door to the foot of Quinn's canopied bed, but he felt like it had been miles. Sharp pains shot through his chest, a reminder of his weakened heart, his previous heart attack. He struggled harder, barely able to see his hands, when something appeared on his frost-covered skin, dripping bright and red. He shakily raised the numb hand and touched it to his lip, leaving a smear of blood. His lips had cracked open. His blood trickled down his face, dripped on the floor.

Jake raised his nearly dead hand to the white figure he could now barely see, in entreaty or threat he could now barely remember. "Please, Quinn . . . my little girl, give . . . her." He slowly collapsed on the floor, his body close to lifeless, still straining forward. She looked down at the dying man as she had looked down on so many others over the years. A brave man, this one, who had conquered his lust and fear. His soul still drove on, trying to force his almost lifeless body forward, to stop her. She sighed, and reached down for the brightly burning ember deep in the man's chest.

* * *

Daria and Helen both cautiously advanced up the dark hallway. Helen had forced her stubborn daughter to at least put on her father's gloves and coat, even though it felt like a tent on her. But it kept her warm. Helen had hurriedly dressed herself warmly in a coat and slacks, taking the lead in the hallway, her small key chain flashlight dimly lighting their way. She tightly gripped the small can of pepper spray in her other hand. Daria still tightly grasped one of her fathers golf clubs in each hand. Frost sparkled on the walls and floor, drifted eerily in the air before them. As they turned the corner, they saw a brightly shining mist spewing out of the doorway to Quinn's room, one half of the broken door laying in the hall, but no sign of Jake.

A quiet moan followed by a whisper of "_Jake_" from her mother caused tears to run down Daria's close to frozen face. Daria made a quick decision, and pushed ahead of her mother to the bedroom door, the icy mist coating her, settling on her numb skin and floating hair. Static electricity crackled in the floating auburn strands drifting above Daria's slight shoulders. Helen hurried after her. Daria gasped in the subarctic cold that flowed from her sister's bedroom, but pushed ahead before her mother caught up, her foot coming up hard against the snow covered body of her father on the floor. He didn't stir at all as Daria knelt beside him, brushing the snow from his still face, his eyes wide open, snow crystals sparkling in his hair, and on his eyelashes. Her mothers loud scream echoed in the room behind her.

"Oh, My God! Jake! Daria! Behind you!"

Daria looked up in sudden terror, as a pair of cold white hands gently caressed her face, and tilted it up to meet the cold inhuman gaze of the Snow Woman.

1Contributed by RLobinske. Thanks!


	24. Chapter Twenty Four

**Chapter Twenty Four**

Jane Lane stood in her upstairs bedroom, looking out at the snow. The two story wood-framed house shook from the fierce wind, and the house's heater strained to keep it warm. The flickering power had shut off several times already. Though the young artist normally didn't mind being alone, she now half wished that she had asked Kevin to spend the night. They were good enough friends now for him to know it wasn't an invitation for sex, but Jane liked her independence, and so hadn't. The swirling columns of snow kept taking on even more and more fantastic shapes that seemed to become almost real, before they would blow away in a frosty sparkle.

Heavily bundled in a thick sweater, the black-haired girl slowly sipped the steaming mug of coffee she had made the last time the power had been on. She had been musing on the stories her sister Penny had told her from her trips to Central America, stories of blood drinking ghosts, monster jaguars that were actually men or women, the goat eating Chupacabra, and other things.

She had slowly realized that Penny had told these stories in one of two different ways. One was with a sardonic tilt of her head, her feet up on a chair, as if saying, "Here's the story, take it or leave it!"

The other one was less common. Penny would be half drunk, with her back in a corner of the room, far away from any windows or doors, muttering in a low tone of voice to one or two of her brothers, sisters, or parents. Wind and Summer were hardly ever the recipients of these less told stories. Trent had heard a few, and always left white faced and shaken, as would be their father Vincent. Their mother Amanda would always retreat into a spasm of new age ritualism, burning candles, wearing crystals, and putting up bundles of herbs. Jane had never questioned it, thinking it was one of the inexplicable things that families did.

The one time she had asked Penny about it, feeling like she was being left out of an important activity, Penny had sighed and shaken her head.

"Janey, I'm not leaving you out because I don't like you. It's just that there are some really bad things in the world that most people don't know about. The more you know about some of them, the more some of them might notice you. Most of the things I know are fairy tales, things that kids tell each other at campfires just before they go to bed. Give you a little shiver, that's all."

"But there are other things out there too, and just because you don't think they're real, don't mean they can't hurt you. I wish I didn't know as much as I've found out over the years, myself. When I talk about this to Trent, or Mom or Dad, it's a form of release. I know that they don't always know if I'm just drunk or what. But just telling somebody else who half-believes you always helps."

Jane looked confused.

"Penny, if there are all these scary things down there, why do you keep going there?"

Her older sister had sighed.

"Because it's the curse of our branch of the Lane family. We're always wandering, and I always wander to Central America."

Jane now frowned.

"What about Trent? He hardly ever goes anywhere, he just sleeps all the time!"

Penny had shaken her head.

"No, Janey, he dreams, and dreams are wandering, too. I know it makes him look like a lazy slacker, and he pretty well is, but it's like the rest of us, and we just can't seem to stop it."

"Does that mean I'm going to have to move around or sleep all the time when I get older, too?"

The normally undemonstrative Penny had squeezed her little sister in a fierce hug.

"I hope not, Janey, I hope not! It would be nice to think that one of us could have a happy settled relationship!"

Penny had left early the next morning. She sent the occasional card from Nicaragua or Mexico, but never said anything of interest, just a few lines about "I'm fine" or "the local ceramic industry sucks."

Jane had treasured that moment of sisterly bonding for a long time, wondering if their family's wanderlust was the reason they didn't seem as close as other families. Then she had meet Daria Morgendorffer in Self Esteem class. She herself had always maintained a cautious distance from the world, though she wasn't opposed to the occasional dip in its social waters. But she was an amateur compared to her new friend. Daria kept up an armor-plated shield at all times between herself and everybody.

After she had met Daria's parents and sister, though, she understood had her better. She had seen Daria outmaneuver her sister and father with ease, though doing it to her mother, Helen was a lot harder. Jane had always thought that Daria and Helen were a lot alike, though she had made a firm point of never mentioning it to her sometimes thin-skinned friend. Daria had always made a point of her distance from her sister, Quinn, who had denied all through high school that they were sisters. Still, Jane always remembered the look of pain on Daria's face the first day they had met. Daria had just told her that the fashionably dressed redhead vamping one of the local boys was her sister, and Quinn had said, very loudly "I'm an only child." Daria had looked so lost. She had never again seen her looking so vulnerable for years.

For years afterward she had disliked Quinn as much as Daria had. Quinn had actually spent a night at Jane's once, when the rest of her family was out of town, which hadn't helped. The redhead had spent the whole night talking like she'd vanish if she ever stopped, and a frazzled Jane had literally pushed her home the next day.

Still, Quinn seemed to have gotten her act together in Daria's senior year. She had finally admitted to the world they were sisters, and the two actually had some heart to heart talks. Daria's defenses had relaxed too, and they seemed to become closer to a traditional sister relationship.

Jane sighed. All of which brought her back to the present. Daria was the most level headed person she had ever met. If Daria said, she'd seen Sandi Griffin's ghost in a bathroom mirror at City Hall, she'd believe it. But what did it all mean? She really wished Penny was here. Of her family, she was the one who might actually be able to help.

She also wished that Andrea had been able to take them to that graveyard. Uninterested as she was in research for most things, she didn't mind doing it for her art projects. She had done some sketches of tombstones before, and had looked up the various designs on them, and the wording of the epitaphs. She watched the X-Files, and various horror movies, and knew the importance of good detective work, in a vague unprofessional way.

Jane's eyes jumped from the view of her front yard to the painting that had so freaked out Daria, lit only by a flickering candle. The vague ghostly image framed in what Daria had called a _torii_, seemed to grow clearer, more distinct. Jane had the uneasy feeling that it was looking at her, that her painting was some sort of link to those other things Penny had mentioned. Those things that Penny had spoken of in a drunken whisper.

Jane blinked. Surely, the branches in the painting weren't moving, were they? It was just the wavering light from the burning candle. That and Daria's anxieties, and being alone in the old house on a stormy night. She glanced away from her painting, nervously sipping from her suddenly cold cup of coffee.

She moved closer to her bedroom window and stared down outside at her front yard. The mobile and sculptures her mother had put on it were buried by the deepening snow. The snow kept spinning into columns and small tornados, which almost, but not quite, would resemble a human figure, before it collapsed.

Until they didn't collapse.

Jane's coffee cup dropped from her nerveless hand, shattering on the wooden floor, the cold coffee soaking her pants legs, as pale figures seemed to step out of each one of the spinning columns of snow. Jane's keen artists eye quickly noted the figures were each different.

Jane convulsively grabbed the lintel of the window, staring down at the figures even as they raised their heads to stare up at her, their hair flowing in the wind almost like running water, and somehow, she wasn't surprised to see their dead white faces looking hungrily at hers, their eyes large and luminous, burdened with the tortures of an restless eternity.

_The more you know about some of them, the more some of them might notice you._

Jane now really wished she wasn't alone at home.

* * *

**Halloween Night**

Sandi laid trembling in the in the tall dry grass while the soft rain spattered down on her. Her long manicured nails dug deeply into the crumbling earth. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, but hot salty tears still squeezed out from under the lids and running down her reddened cheeks, disappeared into the dead soil. Dead soil. Her tight chest constricted with a low, painful whimpering nobody at school would have ever suspected coming out of Sandi Griffin.

How deep did they bury people? Sandi had a vague memory of several funerals she had attended over the years, but didn't remember how deep the holes had been. But somewhere under her, lay dry-rotting wood, and somebody who had been dead for a very long time. Somebody, a man or woman, who had friends, had loved other people, had gone to a job, who had laughed or cried, and now was gone.

What happened to you when you died? Sandi had never really thought about it much. Quinn's flirtation with the idea of guardian angels came to her mind. The Griffin family weren't devout, weren't regular church goers. In fact, Sandi didn't really know anybody at school who was. There was a family Bible in the bookcase in their den, but Sandi had certainly never opened it. Her parents were devoted to their jobs, period. The family was part of their public face.

Good people went to Heaven, and bad people went to Hell. God and his angels lived in Heaven. The Devil and his devils lived in Hell. Memories of Christmas clashed with those of Halloween. Angels with wings, and white robes, Wise men riding on camels, witches in pointed hats flying on broomsticks, ghosts in white sheets, cartoon devils with tails and horns, jabbing at you with plastic pitchforks. Like many modern Americans, Sandi only had a hazy idea of religion or religious holidays, or the deeper meanings they had sprung from.

Now, she, Sandi Griffin, was crawling in the mud, crying in the rain. She would probably catch pneumonia and die. Still, in spite of being such a creepy place, it was very peaceful there. It wasn't raining too hard, yet. Nobody was yelling at her, here. No father to let her down, and no mother to accuse her of being a failure and hurting her. No mean brothers to punch and kick her, locking her outside the house. No two-faced friends to smile at her one minute, while scheming behind her back against her.

Stacy had used to be her friend, ever since the first day she had met her. Pretty, shy little Stacy Rowe, who was always stuttering and stammering, blushing constantly. But she was so sweet, so friendly, so good at keeping things running. They used to have such fun sleep overs with each other. Then Tiffany had come to school. She had been shy too, but still was dressed so elegantly. Sandi and Stacy had taken right to the new girl. Now there were three of them!

They discovered Waif Magazine. They talked about nail polish and lip balm, discovered the mysteries of eyelash density. They had started to date, and eagerly discussed the details of their personal encounters with each other. Their dates had no idea how intimately each and every part of their behavior was examined, in microscopic detail. Sandi slowly became the leader of the newly formed "Fashion Club," while Stacy, the organizer, became the secretary, talking notes, and writing the rules down that Sandi kept coming up with. Tiffany, as usual, was uncertain as to what to do, so she became the wardrobe coordinator, making sure that the well-dressed girls never wore the same outfits on the same days. Waif magazine said that was bad, so it was so.

The Fashion Club had taken Lawndale High by storm. Ms. Li, impressed by their drive, as well as intimated by Sandi's mother, Linda, Advertising Vice President at KSBC, had made them an official high school club. They were on a level with the football team, the cheerleaders, the Honor society, in a single stroke. Through it all, Sandi strode like a Queen.

And then it happened. A big blue Lexus pulled up in front of Lawndale High, where Sandi and Stacy were waiting, as usual, for Tiffany to arrive. A gorgeous girl, wearing a pink, midriff showing shirt, and tight blue slacks stepped out, like a princess leaving her carriage. Sandi was shaken. This girl had such poise! Stacy was shaken too, with her regal grace. She blurted out, "Hi! You're cool. What's your name?"

"Quinn Morgendorffer."

"Cool name." Sandi said.

"Will you go out with me?" said the boy, who a moment earlier had been working up his nerve to ask Sandi out. Sandi was so taken with this new student that this fact didn't register till much later.

* * *

Tiffany's blood burned through Quinn's body like liquid fire. Her bare body seemed bathed by liquid flames. She had gone clubbing for years on her fake id, but had never tasted any liquor like this. It ate at her body along her veins. Quinn felt like she was floating in a lake of fire. It gently lapped at her flesh, both inside and out. She weakly thrashed around, flailing her arms and legs, but kept her eyes tightly shut. Faint whispers came to her ears, but nothing she could understand. She could hear a faint noise behind them, the noise of a mighty roaring, like a great wind. She slowly, reluctantly, opened her eyes.

She frowned, looking around her, but still seeing nothing. Things stirred in the back of her mind, unpleasant things she didn't want to remember, things of horror and pain. The whispering slowly grew louder. The events of the past two weeks, their enforced isolation, their starvation, Sandi's strange "pregnancy," if that's what her condition was, and her savage attack on Tiffany, and then Quinn. Her own drinking of Tiffany's blood off the floor.

Stacy's 'possession', followed by her disappearance. Her "Snow Lady" story. What was going on with that? Stacy's story seemed almost vampiric, ghostly. Stacy's behavior seemed elegantly, well, slutty.

But the other stuff, was almost it's opposite. It was earthy, dirty, animal like, but somehow twisted, not an animal, but people forced to be animals? It also seemed to be so very old. Vague memories of werewolf movies drifted though her mind. She didn't want to think about this kind of thing, not here and now.

In a nice movie theater, with an attentive date catering to her every whim, that was the time. Or watching the movie with her friends, with Sandi pretending not to be sniffing at the sad parts like the rest of them did. Having a sleep-over at each others house, eating low calorie dip and chips, with celery and carrot sticks, discussing the current crop of dates, clothing styles.

But now it all seemed so long ago, almost like a dream. She thought about her parents, knew they would be worried about her. Why hadn't they found them yet? Didn't they care about them anymore?

So slowly she didn't notice at first, things faded out of the darkness surrounding the starving girl. The interior of the cabin reappeared, with Sandi and Tiffany where she had last seen them, the slowly dying fire, the rough benches, bed, and table. Quinn looked down at her own body, laying sprawled on the wooden floor like a broken doll.

Her hair was spread out on the floor, dirty, lifeless, with white strands mixed into it. Her skin was shrunken in on her face, starkly outlining her skull underneath. Her lips were dry and chapped, her tongue had started to swell in her mouth. Her once soft hands were dirty and chapped, her nails broken off in their struggles to survive, gathering wood for the fire. Her right hand pulsed and throbbed with infection from Sandi's bite.

_Why didn't I take care of that,_ Quinn thought. _I could have washed it, put a bandage of some sort on it. Oh, yeah, that's right, why bother anymore? Who cares? Stacy is probably frozen to death outside. Sandi's dying, or almost dead, if she doesn't break loose, and kill Tiffany and me. Tiffany's dying from that bite on her neck, and I'm infected from the bite on my hand! _

It all struck Quinn as very funny. She drifted in the air humming, looking down at herself.

_This will work out fine. Daria can go to college, and forget she ever had a sister. Mom and Dad can pretend I was never born, that I look and act more like my Aunt Rita than either of them. No more stupid little Quinn, with her stupid friends. I remember when Ms. Li made Daria teach my Junior English class, when Mr. O'Neill and the other teachers were all on strike. I tried to get her to give the Fashion Club a break on grading, and she said, "Why go out of your way to defend the stupid? You're not one of them."_

_I bet if Daria was here, she'd have figured a way out of this days ago. She'd be long gone. But here I am, stupid Quinn, the fashionable girl. I'm here looking at one of my only friends, and I'm not thinking about things we've done._

Quinn drifted over to Tiffany, staring down at her. She slept deeply, they all did anymore, it was about the only thing they could do. The Vietnamese girls neck, blouse and jacket were all soaked with dried blood.

_What's that thing they always say on vampire movies? Oh, yeah, that's right, "The Blood is the Life." Tiffany's blood tasted almost, right, like it was something I should have done. What would it feel like, I wonder, to take the bandage off her throat, and drink some more? Just a little bit, I don't need too much more. Animals lick their wounds, after all, it might even be a good thing for her._

A small, tiny part, that was all that was left of the old Quinn screamed at this, beat her hands against the cage trapping her in her own mind.

"No! I can't do that! It isn't right! We're all just going crazy from being so hungry and alone! They'll find us!"

_If they even bothered looking,_ came the sardonic reply.

"Of course they'll look! Our parents all love us!"

_Like Linda loves Sandi?_

"Linda and Sandi have problems! They can work them out!"

_Sure they can! Linda kills Sandi, keeping her place, or Sandi kills Linda, replacing her. We'll have to do the same thing you know, first Daria, and then Mom. Dad won't be any trouble after that._

"No! Shut up, just shut up!"

_I don't want to, and you can't make me!_ was the childish reply, followed by a deep, bestial laughter, almost more of an insane howl.

"Oh my God! I'm going crazy! That's all this is, just a crazy part of my own mind!"

A sudden roar filled the cabin, slamming Quinn's drifting spirit back into her weakened body, forcing her eyes open. She struggled weakly, unable to do much more than roll over on her side, facing Tiffany. The other girl's eyes were also open. Tiffany stared at Quinn in desperation and fear, her lips forcing the words out.

"Please, Quinn, don't do it, it's the thing in Sandi, it's getting you too, it wants death, death and blood . . . "

Each tortured word had caused blood to trickle out from under the crude bandage. Quinn's nose, deadened by the stale odors in the cabin, sharpened at the scent, inhaling it like the sweetest scent of a flower.

_Go, on, just a little taste, it'll help her wound, after all. It'll make you stronger, too, and then, a little nibble on her ear, just like a kiss . . . _

_No._ Quinn moaned weakly. _I can't. I won't. I'm not a monster. I won't kill anybody. Not Tiffany. She might not be all that much, but she's a friend! I, I really don't have that many real . . . friends._

_Just the four of us, Sandi, Stacy, Tiffany and me. We were, are friends! We really are!_

_I will not kill! Not anybody!_

She slowly faded away into a light, uneasy slumber. Laughter filled her dreams, a harsh, howling laughter mixed with snarling and ripping sounds, followed by the sound of an animal gnawing on its bone, a sick, diseased thing, hiding in its filthy den. She could hear it slobbering over its meal, some poor animal it had dragged down into the darkness of its lair.

* * *

Quinn squirmed in confusion. She was being held gently, being rocked almost like a child. Somebody cradled her, gave her small sips of water, small scraps of food she tried to gulp down to fill her gnawing, empty belly. A sudden joy filled her heart.

_We've been found! Rescuers are here at last! Thank you God! Thank you thank you! I hope they helped Sandi and Tiffany first! Surely they did! Oh, poor Stacy! How long was she gone? I never did find out from Tiffany_.

Slowly Quinn's mind forced itself out of her stupor, to a slight alertness.

_Something's wrong. How come I can't hear anybody talking on radios, calling for help? None of that 10-4 stuff you hear on tv? Nobody's saying anything at all! Wouldn't they be feeding us crackers or something, because we've been so hungry for so long, but I've been eating little pieces of . . . _

Her dreams came back to her. Quinn had a sudden, sickening idea of what that animal actually was.

_Oh, no, oh my God no._

The sick, trembling girl slowly opened her eyes. Sandi had sat up, leaning against the wall. Quinn was pillowed up against the huge balloon of her cold stomach. Sandi's flesh felt cold, almost icy. Once Quinn had stirred, all of her movement had stopped. The chill air in the cabin was barely being heated by the low fire, and there was a fresh smell filling the air, the thick, wet smell of ... blood.

Quinn stared for a long moment at the rafters, not daring to look at the floor. But her eyes slowly shifted lower, taking in the details of the rough wooden walls, still covered in places with bark.

_It's bad, it's bad, don't make me look, don't make me look, Sandi is insane, what did she do, what did I do, to Tiffany, poor Tiffany, oh, please, let her be all right . . . _

Tiffany lay on the floor, her back to the other two girls. Her long black hair had been neatly pulled out of the way, brushed with care. A whitish gleam appeared where Tiffany's ear should have been. Quinn focused harder, then passed out in a merciful faint.

Tiffany's face was gone.


	25. Chapter Twenty Five

**Chapter Twenty Five**

Screams. Floating alone in the void, that's all Sandi Griffin was. Screams of guilt. Screams of apology. Screams of pain. Screams of sorrow. Curled up into a tight ball, Sandi screamed and screamed. She was guilty. She was forever damned. Lost and alone. Her guilt ate at her, devoured her, until all she was became a bleeding, raw, twisting knot of pain.

Each and every thing she had ever done became a red-hot needle stuck deeply in her bare flesh. Guilt and shame scorched her writhing body between their twin flames. Anything she had ever said to hurt another person now turned around and struck at her. Envy and jealousy became twin serpents, twisting around her, sinking their venomous fangs deep into her shrinking, pallid soul. Her whole existence became nothing but a sick lie, her every action a loud accusation against herself.

She had failed her mother, caused her to strike her and hate her. She had failed her father, caused the slow dissolution of her parents marriage. It was her fault her brothers hated her, made them bullies. It was her fault the only people she had as friends had become distant from her. By grabbing at Quinn, she had lost Stacy's true friendship, had squashed Tiffany's slowly budding trust.

She and Quinn had played so many status games with each other, trying to top the other, that any real trust had been lost. Quinn always won! Quinn was smarter than she was, was prettier, lovelier! Everybody wanted Quinn!

Meanwhile, sweet Stacy, her first real friend in Lawndale, was ignored, become a nervous, stammering wreck, even while she kept the Fashion Club together. Stacy had always been the real organizer, the one who kept things running, the one who came up with the real ideas, the activities, while Sandi merely parroted things she had read in _Waif Magazine._

Stacy's screams joined her in the chorus. Betrayal. Sorrow. Despair. Buried alive for eternity. Never to be found. No rescue. Her hopes of aiding her friends another nail in her eternal prison. Seething with the power and pain of her new state, but trapped, only able to watch her friend's degradation and death. Her noble sacrifice a trap, a lure, to free her seducer.

Each one of Quinn's tears ate into Sandi like the strongest of acids. Quinn's horror and revulsion at what had happened to Tiffany, as well as her nagging fear over the part she had played in it. Who had killed Tiffany? An insane, mindless Sandi? Or the other voice in Quinn's own head?

Tiffany's soft sobbing was a quiet undertone. She had been conscious, had felt her friends teeth tear out her injured throat. Her soft eyes had widened as her killer had bent down over her with mindless hunger, her yellowed teeth eager for her flesh. Her last word's had been a quiet, "I'm sorry." What had she been sorry for?

Now they were all dead, except for Quinn. Quinn, who was trapped with Sandi's possessed body, while Stacy's "Snow Lady" was slaughtering Quinn's family. Her funny father, Jake. Her wonderful mom, Helen. Her weird sister, Daria. Quinn was going to lose all she had ever had, so even if she somehow survived, she would still be lost. Damned as a killer, a cannibal. Forever followed by "Isn't that the woman who ... ?"

It was all her fault. Alexandra Renee Griffin. Why had she ended up at the graveyard? Why had she agreed? Who had she talked to? She felt the warm grass under her again, the quiet whispers of the uneasy dead. She snuggled as if she was in her own bed, once again a little girl, tucked in safely. Mom and dad were in the next room, all was well.

Sandi felt protected. She barely remembered her fathers mother, but Grandma Griffin had adored her son's little girl, little as Renee Griffin had liked Linda. She had always thought that the woman who had married her son was too controlling, but she had always been polite to her, and was always glad to watch little Sandi. On her part, Linda thought her son's mother was too passive and old-fashioned to understand a modern woman like her.

It had always been so nice to fall asleep in Grandma's lap. She could hear her whispering to her, though she knew she was buried far away.

"Sandi, you're in danger, here! Run away, run away fast, sweetheart! Don't listen to them!"

The voices grew louder and louder.

* * *

Daria at first oddly felt nothing as she knelt down by her fathers motionless body. She unconsciously brushed the snow from his face. His wide eyes didn't blink at her touch. Deep inside herself, she could feel doors closing, information quietly being filed away.

"Here is where I'll keep Dad's ranting about his father, here is where I'll keep his bad cooking, here is where I'll keep his trying to be a better parent. Wrap everything up nice and neat, put labels on the boxes so I'll know what's in them."

Her bumbling father was now past tense. No more "Hey Kiddo!" every morning. No more weird recipes, with surprise spices. No more father-daughter talks, where she or Quinn twisted him around their little fingers. No more getting embarrassed about their parents still intense physical love for each other.

Quinn's disappearance, Sandi's "ghost," the fight with Linda, Jane's painting, Andrea's story. Shock after shock had numbed her. Even her rage at what was going on in Quinn's bedroom had been doused. She stared at the frost sparkling in Quinn's room, on everything her sister owned. The shining fog almost blinded her. The hissing of snow blowing across itself, the only sound she could hear.

Oddly, the main thing in her mind was Quinn's reaction, " Do you REALIZE, it is SNOWING, in my ROOM GOD DAMN IT!"i Even with, or because, of all the shocks to her mind, it grabbed onto that. Quinn stomping around in a rage, at the destruction of her room. Her Dad would grab his newspaper, raise it high, and hide behind it, while the Morgendorffer women engaged in combat. Dad wouldn't be grabbing his newspaper any more. Ever.

He wouldn't be hiding in the garage anymore when Aunt Rita showed up, and she and Helen started their game of sniping at each other, over who their mother had loved best, while Aunt Amy sat back, and egged them on against each other.

No more stories about being locked away at Buxton Ridge Military Academy, being bullied by the other boys. Jake had never said a good word about his father. Daria realized with a shock she didn't even know what the mans name was. Jake and his mother, Ruth, had always called him by his nickname, "Mad Dog."

Her mothers scream barely penetrated her consciousness.

"Oh My God! Jake!"

A different tone entered her mother's next words, forcing Daria out of the shelter of her own mind.

"Daria! Behind you!"

Daria was suddenly aware of a **_presence_** behind her. Blinding white robes seemed to rustle. Slender white hands gently touched the sides of her face and tilted it upwards, almost as if Daria was an infant, being forced to look at something she didn't want to see. Cold raced into Daria's skin from the pale fingertips, almost as if Daria's very blood chilled in her veins. She wanted to close her eyes, but couldn't seem to do it.

She saw a pale, slender throat, then a delicate jaw. Impossibly red lips were set in a quiet smile on the white skin. A small nose, and then ...

The impossibly large eyes. Daria had sometimes seen the expression in her reading of "drowning in her eyes" and scoffing at it. Eyes were eyes, period. But these eyes were different. They seemed to be all pupil, dark pools of infinite darkness. Daria felt herself pulled out of her body, falling first upward, and then outward. She saw a quiet place, a dead place.

Ice and snow forever. Bare lifeless trees thrusting from the frozen soil and drifts of snow, while dead leaves blew across the stiff hands erupting from the soil. Faces frozen in agony barely visible, mouths gaping wide in pain and horror. But they still felt. They would always feel. The searing cold, the pain of loss as their friends and family died around them, as they failed their duties to those they loved. The very air became snow, blowing softly.

Eternal life, but eternally still, eternally helpless, motionless. A prison of silence

This was the ultimate negation of life. Entropy, the end of all things. The universe slowing down, becoming quiet and still, the very stars dying in the eternal darkness. Dead, dark stars, with their lifeless worlds circling their frozen parent in the cosmic winds.

Daria floated in the void, appalled. She could feel herself slowing down, her heart stuttering to a stop, her slow breathing whistling in and out of her lungs, to finally stop, to fall down beside her father's frozen body. She dimly felt Quinn's guilt and shame, knew what she had done to survive, saw the thing possessing Sandi's body, and infecting hers. She saw Jane, her friend. Alone and surrounded, by the hungry dead.

A faint pulse sounded in her ears. Daria, always stubborn, always questioning the way of things. Always saying "why?" Disappointed in life and friendships. Relationships failing, either because of the shortcomings of the others, or her own fears of commitment. Trent the slacker, Ted, the wide-eyed innocent, Tom, whom she had stumbled into on the heels of his own failed relationship with Jane. Tom, who was so witty and charming, but ultimately, rejected to save her cooling friendship with Jane.

Suddenly, the other face of Existence flared. Flame. Fire. The balance of the universe teetered, always on the edge of total stillness, or total destruction. Daria shrank from the raging inferno she dimly sensed, tried to exert herself away from the two opposing yet matching opposites.

Where was God and Heaven in all this? Daria was not particularly religious, though she had read both the Bible, and religious texts, as she had read most other serious books she had come across.

But what she now faced was so primal, almost pure positive and negative polarities. Neither good or bad, it simply was. Neither cared about good or bad, they simply were. Humanity lived in blissful ignorance, imagining themselves to be the greatest of all things.

Daria quietly spoke into the darkness. "Why?"

The darkness answered.

* * *

Helen stared at the impossible figure standing over her husbands body. The ghost was holding Daria, staring deeply into her oldest daughters eyes. Daria stared upward as if frozen herself, silent. The bitter cold bit at Helens exposed face, ate into her body through her clothes. All the stress and tension, all the worries of the last several weeks battered her reeling mind.

She had seen Daria brush by her. She knew that her quiet daughter was trying to protect her, but that wasn't right. Mother's protected their children, not the other way around. She had rushed to Quinn's bedroom door, only to feel her heart stop as she saw Dari kneel next to Jake's body. Her husbands body.

The man she had shared her life with legally for thirty three years, and had loved before that. The stressed out man-child who's love had given them both two wonderful, often maddening, but oh-so-lovely young women. He was dead. Helen knew it, could feel it. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't.

She saw Daria's body slowly stiffen, saw the flesh turning white as the cold from the Yuki-Onna's fingers slowly ate into her. She saw the eternal coldness behind the pale figure, saw her husband buried alive beneath the ice, like Stacy Rowe was, forever. Daria was dying. This thing was killing her. Helen saw the breath leaving Daria's frozen lips being drawn into those of the pale woman. It wasn't only Daria's life, it was her soul. Her living soul.

Helen had had to face loss before, when her father had died, leaving her with only her mother, Teresa, and sisters Rita and Amy.. Their constant bickering had taken on a hostile tone after his moderating influence had been lost. Helen remembered him as always reading his paper, while the feminine noise would get louder and louder, until the paper would lower, and Amos Barksdale's warm brown eyes would be fixed on his wife and daughter's. Her mother would blush, and even Rita and Amy would quiet down.

Quinn was already lost, she knew that, but had kept silent. Now Jake was dead. Not her baby, not Daria! The steely determination that sent Helen forward was pure Barksdale, inherited from her quiet father and fiery mother. Helen moved like a figure trapped in a dream, barely able to move one foot in front of the other, but still pushing herself. She shoved forward, the waves of cold blistering her face, but always the image of Daria's slowly freezing body before her.

Helen felt her own lips crack, the hot red blood dripping down her chin. She saw the same thing happening to Daria, saw her daughter's eyes slowly going blank as her blood ran down her own face. Her own heart pounded, her very blood cooling in her stiffening body, the body she had shared with the wonderful man now dead before her. Daria's warm breath left her bleeding lips faster and faster. Helen saw small cracks appear in her daughters exposed face, screamed silently at the pain she saw Daria facing.

Stiffly grabbing the Snow Woman's hand was like grabbing hold of a marble statue. Helen couldn't budge her an inch. Helen raged helplessly for a brief moment, then saw an answer. Without any hesitation, she knelt next to her daughter, then pushed between them, sealing the ghost's deadly kiss with her own lips.

i Thanks, psychotol.


	26. Chapter Twenty Six

**Chapter Twenty Six**

**Halloween Night**

As Sandi lay on the grassy ground, her grandmother's whispering voice slowly faded away, lost in the surrounding low din that enveloped her. The ground seemed to open up, and the almost comatose girl floated gently through a thick, comfortable warmness. A phrase slowly came to her mind.

_Safe as in a mother's womb. I was in my mother's womb once. Do babies' remember things like that, so safe and so secure._ _I haven't felt safe and secure for so long. I almost don't believe it could be that way anymore_._ But I was a baby once, like everybody else. It's strange. Only in the hospital pictures does mom look like she's glad to see me, glad to hold me. Dad always does, he's always the one holding me. Except when she was still in the hospital, mom always looks so impatient, like she's late for an important meeting._

_I was always so much in awe of mom. I always told myself that I would grow up to be so like her, important, with people listening to my every word, because I was so important_. _But what does it get you? All these people around me used to be alive, and now almost nobody remembers everything about any of them. _

_Other girl's mother's love them! Quinn and Daria, Stacy, Tiffany, Jodie. Maybe not Brittany, her mother ran away to Hollywood, to be an actress or something, if she loved her, shouldn't she have stayed? But my mom stayed, does that mean she loved me? Or it's just convenient for her? Am I a bad person because she doesn't love me? Is this all my own fault for being weak and dumb? Is that why she hits me so much! _

Sandi sighed._ It would be so nice to just float here, away from everybody and everything. Still, if Mom could just love me, everything would be perfect! I'd give everything I have for my mother to love me, just once!_

Sandi's thought quivered through the thick darkness surrounding her. The low murmur of voices became suddenly silent.

A chill seemed to slowly approach her. A cold clear light slowly grew, and Sandi felt herself encased in ice, unable to move or even to think. She seemed to hang there for an eternity, numb and unfeeling.

Slowly, an alien thought grew in her mind, like a knife-blade formed out of the coldest ice. It was clear, passionless, but with a thin undercurrent of amusement.

_You would give everything you have?_ It asked.

Sandi trembled in fear at the coldness, but found herself forced to answer.

_Yes._

_But what do you have, I wonder? What will you give for this favor? Are you desperate enough to truly deal with the forgotten dead, child? For your mother's love?_

_Yes!_ Sandi fiercely replied. _Yes!_ _If she loved me, everything else would be perfect! I'd be happy, I wouldn't be so mean to my friends, Dad would be okay again, I'd do better in school, everything would be great!_

A long silence followed Sandi's impulsive words. A dim figure slowly took form in Sandi's mind. A slim Asian girl in white robes, with a petite figure, her long black hair flowing like silk down her small body, her robes drifting like clouds across her perfection. Her large eyes were dark pools of stillness. She held a large bundle in her slender arms. Sandi stared at her, entranced.

_Once, woman who is still a child, I was as you. I bore my strong son for my proud lord, who fiercely protected us. But he was betrayed by those he trusted, and I fled into the night, friendless and alone. I bargained for vengeance, and was betrayed yet again. I was betrayed here, in this foreign land, and was trapped. I will arrange for your mother to realize her true love for you, if you swear by your soul that you will truly sacrifice all for me to do so. _

Sandi slowly tried to think of what she was doing, but she was so confused. It was more her fear and frustration speaking, than her mind when she answered.

_Yes. Even if it's my soul, I want my mother to love me!_

_So be it, child, so be it. You're soul it is, and your soul it will be. My son will finally live the life so long denied him. But foolish child, your soul? As I learned so long ago, mortals never really sell their souls._

Sandi suddenly gazed deep into the Snow Woman's cold gaze.

_They give them away. _

Sandi screamed in sudden horror as her sprit was blasted away in the swirling void, the true meaning of the phrase, _Anything you have? _echoing in the dim recess's of her mind_. Do we ever have anything, than the companionship of others?_

_---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Jane stared down at her snow-covered yard for what seemed a eternity. The phantoms returned her stare, their large, luminous eyes filled with a ghastly hunger._ Hunger for what?_ She thought. _I'm afraid I'm going to find out._ Their hair and ragged clothing fluttered in the gusting wind. Almost unconsciously, Jane noted that the spectral figures seemed to fade out around their ankles, so they had no visible feet, floating above the snow.

The small part of her mind not screaming in terror said, _Well, that makes sense, or does it? Don't ghosts just float through walls? How the Hell would I know! Just because I've watched both Ghostbuster movies! Can ghosts enter your house without an invitation? Vampires can't. I think. If there are real vampires. I really hope I'm not going to find out about that! This is bad enough as it is!_

Jane looked around her bedroom frantically. No Bibles, no crosses. _Well, gee, no surprise there! Mom worships the Earth Mother, Gaia, or whoever she is, and the rest of us Lanes are so nonreligious I'm surprised I know what Christmas is. Still, if there was ever a time for me to be a nun!_

Hysterical laughter choked her for a moment.The earrings in her ears were all only silver plated. No, silver was for werewolves'. Damn! What could she do! Her room was filled with nothing but her bed, clothes, painted and blank canvas's, easels, paintbrushes, her latest metal sculpture . . .

And her welding set. The two small tanks, one filled with acetylene, the other with oxygen, sat next to the metal sculpture. Sparks from her latest creation had scarred her bare wooden floor, but Jane had never noticed, caught up in the thrill of creation. Jane grabbed the cold metal of the torch handle in her left hand, her right hand grabbing the striker, but then hesitated. What now? Haul it downstairs, waving the torch with one hand, and dragging the tanks with the other? She glanced at the small gauge. _Almost empty. Great, just great. _

A cold chill behind her sent her spinning. Without thinking, she used her thumb and forefinger to twist the gas knob, her right hand squeezing sparks from the striker into the jet of gas from the nozzle. The small blue flame erupted from the torch tip with a steady hiss, the clean blue flame lighting up her darkened bedroom.

Jane choked, letting out a small yelp at what she was looking at. It was the pale, spectral figure of Jake Morgendorffer, Daria's father, standing there in his pajamas, a look of utter despair on his face, his legs fading out several inches above the carpet. The stark portrait in black and white was only broken by the bright red blood running down his chin. Jake and Jane stared deeply into each others eyes for a long moment, and Jane saw Daria, kneeling as her life's breath was sucked out of her, the skin on her face cracking as Helen rushed into the room. The image snapped away, and Jane stared at the face of her best friend's father. Almost unseen tears were running down his face.

He mouthed the words Jane almost couldn't hear, _Please, Jane help Daria, Helen, . . . _Suddenly he started frantically flailing his arms around, as his figure seemed torn by tremendous winds, being torn away piece by piece until it disappeared. Jane stared for a long moment at the empty space, until a sudden crackling made her bring up the small blue flame from the torch. She saw the pale forms of the spirits from outside slowly passing through the walls, leaving their faint outlines formed in frost on the walls.

The eyes of each figure drilled into her own, each glance ripping small pieces' of her body heat out of the trembling girl, though none seemed to want to get too close to the small flame she frantically waved. Jane's fear of her attackers warred with the frantic anxiety she felt for Daria, and she screamed in frustration, trapped here, and not being able to race over to help her friend. Her screams of anger seemed to confuse her attackers, and their attack slowed. Still, their very gaze seemed to leach something out of her spirit.

Jane gasped, struggling to form some plan, to drive these things away, to run and rescue Daria. Then the true horror of what she had seen finally struck her. The thing was in Daria's house! Straining her whole body, she dragged the tanks to the door, the surrounding phantoms reluctantly giving way. Jane tried not to look in their eyes, the sheer desperation she saw there tearing at her.

Standing in her way was a little girl, still dressed in an Eighteenth century night gown. Her long blonde hair was now a pale white, the misery on her face tearing at Jane. She silently mouthed a word Jane made out only too well, _Mommy?_ Jane ground her teeth in sheer frustration. This child had been dead for centuries, forced to wander the earth. Why! She had to find Daria!

As Jane thumped the tanks down the stairs, the ghosts crowded her, and she waved the torch around frantically, their sheer presence draining her, eating at her spirit. She stumbled on the tank hose, and the flame caught the dry wallpaper, which promptly blazed up the wall. Jane tried to pat it out, but the flames scorched her hand. The tanks tumbled down the stairs, the flame from the spout catching at the carpeting. The torch landed on an old armchair, which started to blaze. The ghosts shrank back from the building flames. Jane stood paralyzed as the flames built up around her, the wallpaper on the ceiling burning fiercely. Torn between the need to evade the ghosts, put the flames out, and rescue Daria, Jane couldn't do anything at all. She didn't even know if her absent-minded family _owned_ a fire extinguisher! Sparks flew through the air, and Jane frantically beat at the sparks landing on her hair. She grabbed the phone on the living room table, hearing only the emptiness of the dead line.

Jane coughed from the smoke in the air, dropping down on her knees and hands, crawling to the door, as her families home blazed and collapsed around her

Quinn huddled in the corner of the cabin farthest away from Sandi's comatose form and Tiffany's body. She could still taste the blood in her mouth. She had crawled to the door and barely made it outside before vomiting, uncontrollably retching until her body hurt, but still feeling unclean, the sick heat inside her not dying down even in the fierce winds and drifting snow. She stared blankly at her own hands, at the skin stretched tightly over her finger-bones.

She had just wanted to stay outside, lay down in the snow, but something deep inside her had made her crawl back inside, feed the small fire before retreating into the corner. One small glimpse of what had remained of Tiffany's face had forced shriek after shriek out of her, until only by bitting on her already infected wound on her hand had forced her to stop. She saw Tiffany's terrified face once again, begging her, warning her about the thing inside Sandi getting her. Quinn thought she knew what the Snow Lady had wanted, she wanted Stacy, but what did this other thing want from them? What was it! Why were they being made to suffer like this?

A sudden thought struck Quinn, and she slowly crawled on her hands and knees to Sandi's side.

Afraid of the answer, she asked the question she needed to ask.

"Sandi? Sandi? Can you hear me?"

Sandi laid still, only the slight fluttering of her nostrils showing she still lived.

Quinn desperately grabbed Sandi's head and shook her, her now grey-white hair stiff and greasy with dried blood and dirt in Quinn's hands.

"Damn it, Sandi, wake up! Who did it? It was you, wasn't it, wasn't it! You're the crazy one, not me! Not me, I couldn't have done it! But you're crazy, you'll just go to a hospital or something, and I'll help you get better, I promise!"

"Sandi? Please talk to me! I'm scared, Sandi, I'm really scared! I want to go home now! Please wake up! You're the only one still here! Stacy's gone, and Tiffany's, Tiffany's dead! You did that, didn't you? Please, tell me it was you, please Sandi, for God's sake, wake up and talk to me!"

Sandi's huge belly squirmed and bulged. The face Tiffany had seen earlier pressed up against Quinn, who shrieked and shrank back against the wall. With unholy glee on its face it smiled at Quinn. Sandi suddenly groaned as she was dragged back into her pain-filled body from the Abyss. She coughed up blood out of her mouth, her panting voice filled with pain as she screamed:

"Quinn!"

Quinn desperately grabbed her sole living friend's hand, her vision swimming, filled with impossible things. She saw the air thick with people, all pale, all staring at her in fear and loathing which stunned her. **They** were afraid of **her**!

Sandi's weak voice dragged her attention back to her.

"Quinn, I'm, I'm sorry, she tricked me, I didn't remember anything, I, I swear I didn't. I thought it was all just a dream, a nightmare, I wouldn't hurt any of you, I, I swear it."

"Sandi! Thank, thank G . . . " The word caught in her throat. If she wasn't a killer, she was at least a cannibal. Would God ever hear her again? Wouldn't her guardian angel turn away in disgust from the sound of her voice? **She Had Eaten Her Best Friend!**

"Quinn?" came Sandi's weak voice. "I'm sorry. It wasn't your fault,"

Quinn stared into Sandi's tortured face and saw the truth there, the truth that she had tried to hide from herself. It hadn't been Sandi or the thing inside Sandi which had killed Tiffany with her bare teeth, it had been her.

It had been Quinn.

Quinn leaned back against the wall, staring mindlessly at the ceiling, the air thick with the crowding spirits now bonded to her by the flesh she had devoured. She threw back her head and howled, her shrieking became a roar, pouring from her raw throat, the timbers shaking, the swarming spirits crowded away from her in sudden fear. Quinn's howls became louder and louder, her thin body twisting, her face contorting, her teeth tearing her thin, dry lips. Her thin legs and arms twisted horribly, lengthening, the muscles tearing and reuniting. Her dry, dirty skin, tore open, blood trickling out on the floor. Quinn's bones twisted inside her writhing body, snapping and breaking, before growing back together. Quinn's filthy clothing tore off her horribly changing body. She twisted into a huge knot of naked flesh, out of which screams and howls emerged. A thick, greasy, vile smelling goo coated her bare organs as they ripped apart, reforming into new shapes.

Sandi watched with glazing eyes. Even the thing inside her was silent for once. A thin whispered word almost silently came from Sandi's lips. A very old word.

"Wen-di-go."


	27. Chapter Twenty Seven

**Chapter Twenty Seven**

Tom Griffin struggled through the harsh blizzard. Though he was only a few feet from his front door, he felt like he had fought for hours. The swirling snow grasped at his feet, like ice cold hands reaching out of the ground. The howling wind kept forcing his thin body down, only his grip on the snow shovel kept him on his feet. The wind suddenly doubled its force, its shrieking fury sounding like the desperate screams of a million dammed souls. The swirling columns of snow that surrounded became a thousand phantom figures, men, women and children. Their faces were gaunt, lined with pain and despair. Their pale fingers reached **past** his clothing, ripping away pieces of his rapidly fading body heat. He desperately kept struggling, forcing his way through the specters until he slammed into his front door. Clumsily prying his numb hands off the snow shovel, he clumsily fumbled at the door. It took both of his hands to open the knob, and he fell inside. The wind followed him, the snow of the storm rapidly coating the carpeted floor around him.

Sam and Chris had heard the door slam open. Glancing at each other, they ran out of Sandi's room and stood at the top of the stairs, staring past their fathers prone, gasping form to the still open door, and the large glass window beside it. They were both crowded with a host of figures, only their dark, staring eyes really distinct against the swirl of the snow outside.

Sam stuttered, "Dad?"

Tom glanced behind him at the door and croaked out, "Sam! Chris! Stay up there! **Don't come down!**"

Chris almost screamed "Dad! What are those things?"

"I don't know, but for God's sake, don't come down here!"

Tom crawled painfully on his hands and knees back to the open door, shoving it closed with his shoulder until it slammed shut. Sharp pains shoot through his arms and legs from his almost frozen hands and feet. He looked up frantically hearing Chris cry out.

Chris had felt a cold hand painfully grip his shoulder, and the teenager shouted out in surprise, looking behind him. His mother Linda stood there, her empty hand falling back to her side. Her pale face was flushed. Her eyes were bloodshot, bright red veins crawling like snakes across their surface. She smelled strongly of liquor. Her hair was limp and straggly. She stumbled forward, and only Sam's quick grab at her arm kept her from falling down the stairs.

Linda tried to struggle away from her son's grip. Sam was in shock. He had never seen his total in charge mother like this before, out of control. Chris stared back and forth in horror, between his drunken mother and the door. Linda shouted, "Let go of me! I'm your mother, and I can take care of everything!"

"Mom! No!" Sam shouted back. "Don't go down the stairs! There's something bad outside! I don't know what it is, but it's hurt Dad!"

Linda stared groggily down the stairs. Tom had crawled as far as the foot of the stairs, but was unable to get any higher. Linda shouted, "Thomas Griffin! Get on your feet! A Griffin never crawls! Never! Not to anyone!"

"Chris, go downstairs and help dad!" Sam said.

"What! With those things down there!" Chris shouted back.

"They're outside, and Dad's hurt! I have to hold on to Mom! Please, Chris!"

It was the pleading tone in his brothers voice that decided Chris, and he slowly clambered down the stairs to his father's side. Tom bit his lip in pain as Chris helped him to sit up on the bottom of the stairs. The four Griffins stared at each other for a long minute. Tom was in shock, only the pain from his frozen hands and feet keeping him from passing out. Linda struggled in her alcoholic fog. Sandi and Patti Wells, Helen and Daria, Tom and her sons all swirling around in her hazy mind, ranting at her, blaming her for everything.

Sam and Chris held onto their helpless parents. Tom's long impotence in the Griffin household had led them to ignore him, and Linda's drunkenness left her a burden. Sam stared at the door, listening to Linda's raving with only half a mind. He jumped when something brushed his leg, and barely stifled a nervous cry. Looking down, he saw his sister's white Persian cat, Fluffy, was crouched at the head of the stairs, staring fixedly at the closed front door. The cat was trembling, every hair of its body tense. All four of them stared at the cat, they followed its gaze to the glass panes on the front door.

Very slowly, a pattern of frost started to form there. The delicate crystals grew, catching the lights inside the house, forming a dim picture. The temperature in the house grew colder and colder, and nobody made a move when the power failed again. The click of the lights as they started to cool, the whirr of the heating fan as it spun to a stop. The pattern on the front door was the only thing that mattered anymore. An eerie whitish glow slowly built up, coming from the swirling snow outside itself. The dim light lit up the Griffin household with its pearly incandescence.

The wind roared outside, shaking their house. The thick walls suddenly seemed so fragile, and the male Griffin's looked uneasily at all the wide glass windows. Linda just stood there in Chris's tight grip, staring at the front door, the pattern becoming more and more distinct, obscuring the throng of figures standing outside, staring in. Tom, Sam, and Chris all slowly realized something.

They were all staring at Linda.

Each male slowly turned as well, staring at the dominating force in the Griffin household like they had never seen her before. Linda was a pitiful sight, her hair matted and unbrushed, her face pale, her red eyes shining in the pale snow light coming in through the wide windows. Her face, normally impassive, was a sea of conflicting emotions. Self pity warred with pride, jealousy with fear.

Linda stared numbly back, trying to make sense of the frost patterns on the door, the most important thing in her life. She knew the phantoms were staring at her, but she knew something that her husband and sons didn't.

Sandi stared at her drunken mother through each eye, in accusation and worse, in pity. Her daughter, who Linda had thought of so long as nothing but a failed copy of herself, was gazing deeply into her, seeing all the failures, the petty fears, the cheap triumphs that defined her life. Linda screamed in fury at her daughter.

"Sandi! Alexandra Renee Griffin! Don't you dare look at me like that! I sacrificed everything for you!"

"Mom?" Sam said, struggling to hold onto his mother, "who are you talking to? I don't see Sandi. I just see those people, or whatever they are outside. Where's Sandi?"

Linda's kicking feet struck Fluffy. The tense cat didn't move or hiss, but just turned its emerald green eyes to meet Linda's. Linda froze, staring back. The cat's eyes were suddenly deep caverns filled with ice, sparkling in frosty glory. Dim phantoms slowly wandered through the empty spaces, staring sadly at the poor souls trapped in the ice, struggling to escape as they had for millennia.

Stacy Rowe stared back at her in despair, buried alive. She struggled, unable to move in her prison of frozen earth. Stacy's empty clothing blew erratically on the top of the massive snowdrift above her. Her brown hair was shot through with strands of black, and her eyes were large dark empty pools that drew at Linda, into the emptiness now at Stacy's core. She was able to see and hear all, though, and Linda felt her burning pain as Stacy saw into the cabin, and Linda saw with her, as Sandi's body swelled in agony, as Quinn's body twisted in its grotesque transformation. She saw Tiffany in the cabin, sitting in the corner, her back to her friends, crying as she brushed her long black hair. When Tiffany slowly turned and stared back at her with her ravaged face, the Griffin house shook with Linda's horrified screams.

Sam didn't see any of this, but held grimly onto his now hysterical mother. Linda tore at him, her nails cutting at his face. The fourteen year old boy was strong, but trying to hold onto his once feared mother while she attacked him confused him. Chris's desperate shout from below galvanized him, and he roughly shoved his mother away, Linda stumbled back down the hall.

Chris had one arm around his almost frozen father, struggling to get him up the stairs. A loud crackling, like breaking ice drew their attention to the front door and wide window besides it. The pale phantoms slowly passed through them, their ragged clothing and hair still wind tossed even inside the house. Fluffy snarled at them, his white fur erect in terror and rage, his sharp claws raked out at the slowly approaching specters. Sam stared down, terrified, before he swore and ran down the steps, helping his brother get their father up to the second floor. The phantoms never changed their slow pace, slowly moving forward toward the petrified family.

Helen's body shook in an icy passion as her life's breath tore out of her into the icy shell of the ghost stealing Daria's soul. Her own spirit mingled with her oldest daughters, thoughts and memories swirling into a confusing jumble. Daria gasped in sudden confusion as her mothers once fiery spirit blazed in fury around the dying sparks of her own soul, like a warm wind on the dying embers of a fire. The dying girl thrashed in confusion, her stiff body falling backwards, tripping over her fathers frozen corpse. Daria fell to her hands and knees, staring almost mindlessly at the sight before her. Her weak eyes peered through the frost-covered glasses still on her half-frozen face.

Her mother knelt in front of the spectral form of the Snow Woman. Their lips were locked together in an embrace of clashing energies. Helen's hands were half raised as if fending off Daria's attacker. Fragments of her mother's life roared through Daria's numb mind. She saw her father standing over her in tears, her mother exhausted as she saw her newborn daughter for the first time, and Daria knew she was staring at herself in her father's arms.

Daria dragged herself back to the present with difficulty. A swirling funnel surrounded the two women in front of her, bands of flame and snow mingling in an almost abstract pattern. But the flames were fading, dying down. Helen's eyes frantically sought out her daughters, and Daria could see the relief and desperation in her mother's eyes.

Daria struggled to make sense of everything, her mother's memories confusing her, the thoughts of what she had seen in the abyss slowly reforming, becoming clearer, it's cold elemental force gleaming deep inside of her reviving mind.

Ice and fire. Eons of darkness, but not lifeless. Thought was here, brooding in its isolation, unknowable, undefinable. All matter pressed together in an infinite darkness. And suddenly, the fire, a humble spark appeared, and a universe exploded in pain and fury. All matter flew apart in a titanic explosion.

And the fire thought as well. Cold and fire clashed almost mindlessly but awareness slowly grew in the two polarities. Daria saw how fragile what she had thought of life was, dwelling in almost a band of constantly melting frost, frail creations whose very life force slowly destroyed their own bodies. She saw the swirling pattern of energy the Earth was, the living being she lived on her entire life. The Earth stared back at her, the furnace of it's own life licking at Daria's fading spirit. Daria gasped in pain.

The Snow Woman stared deeply into Helen, feeling her sacrifice for her daughter. She pitied her, but many mothers had tried to sacrifice themselves for their children over the millennia. Helen felt her spirit fading, saw deeply inside the strange figure facing her, saw the trap which had caught her up into the lives of her family. She saw the **other** one, which had claimed Quinn, as it had also claimed the Snow Woman. The two mothers, removed from each other by two thousand years, stared deeply into each others eyes. The Snow Woman reached out, and pushed Helen away from her, the near frozen woman falling helplessly to the ground. Her deep sigh cut through the helpless Daria like a knife.

Daria suddenly didn't see a monster in her sister's room. She saw a lonely woman, trapped by hostile forces, seeking her own child against a hostile, uncaring, universe. They stared at each other, the Snow Woman's pain stark against her cold beauty. Then she once again looked at her parent's bodies laying stiff at her feet and screamed in pain.

Daria's small figure staggered erect, gripping one of her father's golf clubs she had brought as a weapon in her stiffened hands. The absolute cold pouring from the Snow Woman was a blasting wave of pain. Daria grimly struggled to put one foot ahead of the other. The ghost just stood there, staring at Daria's slowly approaching form.

The young woman couldn't even see thru her now ice-covered glasses, but she still pushed her slender body forward, dying with each step. Daria's thick auburn hair was a frozen clump matted on her head. She couldn't feel any part of her body at all now.

_Mom? Dad? Quinn? I'm coming to get you. I'm coming too. Sorry, Jane, would have been nice to have been with you in Boston. But I've got to do this. I've got to at least **try!**_

Daria clumsily swung at the softly gleaming figure before her. A pale, small hand reached out effortlessly caught the frosted-covered metal shaft of the golf club, and it shattered like glass. Daria fell to her knees, staring blindly at the floor.

_Well, that's it, isn't it? It's all over, now. No last minute heroism here. No ultimate revelations, no neat wrap up. I'm going to die now, with mom and dad, by something I don't know anything about at all, and I won't even know **why . . . **_

Daria's thoughts faded away as she stiffly fell to the snow-covered carpet of her sister's bedroom. Her glasses fell off, landing by the bodies of her parents.


	28. Chapter Twenty Eight

**Chapter Twenty Eight**

Jane crawled on her belly toward the front door. Choking smoke swirled above her, while the crackle of the flames devouring her families old wood-framed home filled her ears. She suddenly heard a pitiful meow.

_Damn it, the cats!_

Zachary and Taylor, her families two scruffy looking pets, were huddled under a chair, crouched in terror. The two mangy ex-strays eyes were wide, their tails lashing the air. Bulbs in an overhead light fixture shattered, showering Jane with small pieces of glass, as she grabbed at the cats, rising to her knees, and shuffling rapidly the last few feet to the door. The cats were squirming in her grip, the scared animals clawing and biting at her. Jane was choking on the smoke, her eyes running with tears from the smoke, and banged unseen into the door. She dropped one of the cats, and fumbled for the latch on the old lock. It resisted her fumbling hand for a moment, before it clicked open. Zachary clawed frantically at the door before Jane, coughing, was able to open it wide enough to let him out. She threw Taylor out the door after him, automatically grabbing her light jacket from the coat-rack by the door before crawling outside after the cats.

Her lungs were still filled with smoke, and she couldn't stop coughing, which got worse when the cold wind bit into her sweating body. Jane started to shiver violently, and suddenly started to gag, unable to breathe, She coughed and coughed, unable to even stand up for a precious few minutes. Looking around through the wildly gusting snow, she crawled on her hands and knees over to the snow-covered mound which marked her brother Trent's old car. Racked by another bout of coughing, she painfully pulled her jacket on over her thin shoulders, zipping it up with difficulty.

She fumbled at the door handle. For a minute her heart almost stopped when the door wouldn't open, then it came away from the frame with a loud pop. A sudden crash came from the burning house, and she took an involuntary look back at it. The open door and windows framed the inferno inside. The smoke was completely lost in the blowing snow. The old wooden house had gone up like a matchstick. The hiss of the snow as it melted in the flames sounded like a den of snakes. With a loud sob, she crawled into the car, the tears from her eyes not only falling from the smoke.

Crying, she grabbed the key which, as usual, the careless Trent had left in the ignition, and clicked it. The dash lights flickered, and the engine made a dull whirring noise. Her heart seemed to freeze in her chest. She turned the key again, frantically pumping the gas pedal. This time, the engine was completely silent. She stared at the dim dash lights for what seemed like forever. Her fists were clenched tightly on the worn steering wheel.

She glanced wildly around her, then slammed the door open, keeping her footing in the thick powdery snow with difficulty, and grimly slogged down the street. Daria's house was three blocks away, the phones weren't working, and she doubted that she could get any of her neighbors to even open their doors on a night like this, let alone give her a ride. Behind her, fire and ice clashed as the two elements destroyed her home. Jane had never felt so alone.

The freezing wind lashed at the struggling teenager. Jane, an avid runner, was barely able to walk through the howling blizzard. Only by focusing on Daria's image was she able to keep on going.

_If I run into one of those ghosts now, it's going to be all over real fast_, she thought grimly._ I won't even be able to see any of them in this!_

But she still struggled ahead, only her superb runner's physique allowing her to move forward. Soon, even that wasn't enough, and she had slowed to almost a crawl, when a light behind her illuminated the driving snow. She turned and gaped at the two circles of light slowly approaching her. The small car slowed down as she slipped and slid in front of it, banging on the hood. She grabbed at the passenger side door, but it was locked. She screamed, knowing what she must look like to the driver, but then the door opened, and she gratefully climbed in, pulling the door shut behind her.

A gasp from the driver of the car was followed by an ominous click.

"You! You were with that Morgendorfer woman!"

Turning in shock, Jane found herself staring into the barrel of a pistol. It almost touched her face in the small car. It was being held in the shaking hands of Walter Smit's, mayor of Lawndale.

The little blonde girl cowered in the exact center of her bed, buried under the thick pale blue comforter and blankets. Eleven-year-old Tricia Gupty could hear the wind shaking the wooden walls of her parent's house. The hiss of the snow outside sounded like the low murmur of voices. The pale light reflecting off the snow shone through the thin curtains that shrouded the wide windows of her bedroom. She wished she still shared a bedroom with her brother, Tad, but she was too big for that, now. Still, even nine-year-old Tad's company would be better than being alone in this dark.

Her parents had told her that she was a big girl, and the dark was just dark, and the snow was just snow. Modern, enlightened people like her parents, and their children, needed to embrace correct ways of thinking, to only see the best things in people, that things like fear was wrong. If you weren't afraid of things, they couldn't hurt you.

Tricia tried hard to live up to her parent's ideals, but away from them, it was hard. The world didn't seem as rosy as her parents said it was. Still, Tricia and Tad weren't dumb. They could see things for themselves. They had learned a lot from Daria and her friend Jane, the one and only time they had been allowed to take care of them! Still, her sister Quinn, their regular sitter, was nice, too, even if she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to her girlfriends. Quinn had become more attentive, though, doing her homework, and making an honest effort with them. They really enjoyed a lot of the stories she had told them about Daria!

Tricia had heard that Quinn and her friends were all gone, lost in the snowstorm. She wondered if that made Daria sad. She would be sad if her mom and dad, or Tad got lost or hurt. Her parents hadn't wanted her to know, but she had found out anyway, and told Tad, too. Her parents had been very unhappy she had done that, but had admitted to them that Quinn and her friends were missing, and that it was okay to worry about them. Their mom had even let them call Quinn's house and talk to her mother. Mrs. Morgendorffer had sounded really tired and sad, even though she was nice, thanking them, and telling them that Quinn had always told her they were the best of her sitting jobs.

Had Quinn and her friends just gotten lost in the snow, or had a bad car accident? Tricia knew a bit more about the real world than her parents thought she did. She was very curious about everything her parents tried to shield her from. She had met Stacy Rowe, too, and seen the other two girls, once, Sandi and Tiffany, when they had driven up to her house, and talked with Quinn.

Tiffany seemed well, unfocused. Sandi was very cold and bossy. Quinn later said that's just the way they were, and that Sandi had become nicer.

Tad had told her that he had talked to a friend of his, who had told him that people said Sandi was crazy, and had driven off a cliff with her friends. Sandi hadn't seemed crazy, but how did you tell if a person was crazy, anyway? Wouldn't Quinn have been able to tell if Sandi was crazy? Tricia was so confused! She wished she could talk to Daria about all this. Daria was really smart. Quinn said she was in college now, far away in Boston. Was she going to wear a lab coat and do experiments? But she hadn't even seen Daria since she had sat them that one time.

This storm was strange, too. Telephones weren't working very well anymore, and the electricity kept going out, because the wet snow broke the lines. The poor electric company people kept fixing them, but then new ones broke.

Tricia's worried parents kept her bedroom door open, too. The little girl had already woken up her brother and parents twice with her screams from her nightmares. She didn't tell them what the nightmare was though. The sound of the wind would change to a sinister hissing, almost like a labored breathing. She would hear a whisper from her window.

"Tricia, it's me, it's Quinn, I'm so cold, Tricia, please let me in."

When the little girl climbed out from under her covers, and peered outside through the curtains, she saw Quinn there, down on the snow-covered lawn. Her favorite sitter was crouching there naked, her glorious mane of red hair matted, her body all twisted, her eyes bulged out strangely. Her face was covered with blood. She would hold something to her mouth and casually gnaw on it. That was where Tricia always woke up.

Quinn was eating a human hand.

Sandi lay on the hard wooden floor, only semiconscious. She saw the ghosts slowly moving in against her mom and dad, Sam and Chris. She saw deeply into her mother, saw all her sins, her stealing her father from his true love, Patti Wells. Her continual harping on the one thing in her life, the interview with Rosalyn Carter.

Her father's fault's were also revealed, his passiveness, his timidity. He knew Sandi had been abused, but had said nothing at all to anybody. Why? He loved her, Sandi was sure of that, but her mother loved her too, didn't she?

The graveyard scene played over and over in Sandi's mind, and she struggled to understand it. What had she agreed to? What had the ghost meant by her words? Stacy had replaced the Snow Woman in her grave, freeing her to wander the earth once more. She was having the Snow Woman's child, as she had said. But what was going on with Quinn? Why had she murdered Tiffany, and in such a gruesome way?

The sound of Quinn's transformation came dimly to Sandi's ears. The raw screams had become strangling choking, the slow sound of tearing flesh and bone still sounded, but far more deliberately. The word that Sandi had said floated in her mind. Slowly, memories that had never been hers came into view, like bubbles from deep under a stagnant swamp.

**_Wen-di-go._**

Sandi fumbled with the word through the haze of anguish and physical pain that was her world. A very old word. It had been used by Native Americans centuries before the arrival of the white men. A meaning slowly grew, a definition of something as old as the world itself.

"_The Evil Spirit that devours Mankind._"

It had another name as well.

"_The Spirit of the Lonely Places."_

Brief flashes appeared in Sandi's mind. The Snow Woman living in the cabin as mortal, happy, pregnant. She was so full of hope. A smiling man at her side, a proud father to be. What had happened to them? What had gone so horribly wrong?

A ripple of pain across her body wiped everything else. Every muscle in her back and stomach twisted in agony. Sandi's hands scraped painfully against the floor, her broken nails long since worn to a nub. She bit into her lip, her teeth cutting deeply. Her breath hissed out through her clenched teeth, blowing out the bloody foam onto the pale skin of her white face.

The chill weight that had tormented her for so long seemed to shift, move in her body. Her muscles all tightened at once, wringing a loud scream from Sandi. Wave after wave of cramps started sweeping her withered body. Sandi's bony arms and legs thrashed in pain. Sandi screamed again and again, her shrill cries mixing with the groaning and whimpering coming from the pulsing pile of wet flesh which was all that could be seen of Quinn.

_I didn't mean for anything like this to happen! How is this supposed to make mom love me?_ _This isn't fair!_ _I never deserved this! I'm the one mom hurt! Why me?_

Sandi's thought was broken by another loud groan from Quinn. Sandi turned her head, looking at the girl she considered her best friend. Quinn didn't look like anything that had ever been remotely human. Sandi's vision wasn't too good anymore, even after more than two weeks in the dim cabin, but she saw something that looked like wet bone. Bits and pieces of color from the raw flesh glistened, reds and blues.

Something crawled out of the pile, slowly, clawing at the floor. Sandi could barely recognize it as Quinn's hand, swollen and misshapen. She stared at it in shock, and then shame. Quinn's small hand, once so elegant, with flawless nails and soft skin

_Quinn! She's my best friend! Sure, we schemed against each other all the time, but we still liked each other. What have I done to her? This is mom's fault, my fault! Look at her! Look at Tiffany! She's dead! Stacy's gone too! She's buried alive outside! And it's all our fault, Mom and me!_

_At least I'm still alive, but look at them!_

_That's why I'm still alive, isn't it? That's it! She promised that mom would remember her love for me. But what about my friends?_

The Snow Woman's last words came back to her.

_Anything you have? Do we ever have anything, than the companionship of others?_

Sandi eyes looked at Quinn again.

_No! I never wanted to sacrifice her! Not any of them! What have I done? What has our fighting done to the only three people who ever came close to understanding me! _

Sandi started to slowly push herself along the floor on her back. She was very weak. Her arms had little strength left in them. She had to stop, panting for long minutes at a time. Even with the ice cold burden in her womb, she was soon sweating, her skin cool and clammy. But she kept on, until finally, she pushed up close to Quinn. While she laid there, breathing heavily, she slowly reached out and took Quinn's misshapen hand in hers, squeezing it tightly.

Her words a weak whisper, she said, ."Quinn? I don't know if you can hear me anymore. But I'm sorry. I know it's not much, but I'm here with you, I'm here with you."

Quinn's hand squeezed gently back.


	29. Chapter Twenty Nine

The Griffin house was lit with the coldly flickering snow light. The phantoms slowly advanced, their ragged clothing and hair whipped by the hurricane winds of the Abyss. Sam and Chris, holding their half-conscious father, could only hear the rapid panting of their own ragged breathing. Their breath formed into sparkling crystals instantly as it left their mouths, in the now freezing temperature in their house.

Behind them, Linda struggled to her feet, the intense chill driving the alcoholic fog from her mind. She shook her head in disbelief, shocked at Chris's rough shove. Her face ached from hitting the wall, and she barely stifled a sob of pain. She wasn't going to cry, not like Sandi had done, no matter what! With the single mindedness of a drunk, her bleary thoughts focused on that image, a sobbing teenaged girl, her thin arms and legs covered with dark bruises, her face buried in her hands, biting her lips to keep from being heard. She crouched down between the wall and her bed, hoping to avoid any more of her father's drunken rage. The girl raised her thin face, glancing fearfully at the open door to her cramped bedroom. But it wasn't Sandi cowering there. It was Linda herself.

Her father, Ed Johnson had died of an alcohol fueled heart attack during one of his weekly rages. Neighbors had often called the police to complain about the noise, but his wife, Alice, had never filed a complaint against her abusive spouse.

Ed Johnson had been a tough, foulmouthed man, running an auto salvage yard, and driving a tow truck. Years of frustration were taken out on his meek wife. Linda's own spirit focused on her schoolwork, where the quiet bookworm dreamed of a life a world away from the trailer park world she had grown up in. She was going to be a modern woman, is charge of her own destiny! She loved her meek, hard-working mother, only dimly understanding the trap the older woman had been born into. Alice had married Ed to get away from her own parents, only to discover nothing had changed, that life was still a daily hell. Ed would work all day, towing cars to his wreaking yards, or to a local garage, with a smile on his face.

Friday nights, though, he would start drinking heavily, and the least little thing Alice or Linda would set him off. Though neither he nor Alice knew it, Linda knew one result of her father's rages. She had seen a medical report Alice had hidden away. On discovering that his wife was pregnant a second time, a year after Linda's birth, with another girl, the disappointed man had hit Alice so hard she had fallen down the front steps to their trailer, and had miscarried. She had fantasied for years about having a little sister, even making one up as an imaginary friend, and talking to her every night, in the darkness of her bed room.

Linda didn't have any friends, otherwise. There were no young girls close to her age living in the run down trailer park. At school, her poverty was visible in her patched clothing and brown paper bag lunches from home. Though she was always clean, her lack of makeup or jewelry made her the scorn of the class elite. Marion Hassel, in particular, turned her life at school almost as bad as it was at home. Marion's father was a local banker, and the attractive blonde never failed to point out to her group that Linda's father was a drunken junk dealer. She dated the captain of the football team, Harold Olson, the king of Buford high school, as Marion was the queen.

Linda didn't date at all, as she was ashamed of bringing her date home to their rundown trailer, and her fathers drunken rages. Her father didn't generally approve of any of the boys she liked, anyway. Linda was well aware of how Marion had labeled her as "Linda the Mouse," as the phrase was often scrawled on her locker or desk. Marion also scorned how much Linda studied. Her teachers were pleased, however, and Linda desperately hoped for a scholarship, dreaming of college, and moving her mother and her away from Buford, leaving her father far behind.

But still, she had wanted to be popular, be liked by all the "cool kids," and it hurt her when she wasn't, when she had to stay home on weekends. It hurt her when she came to school and found "Mousy Linda" scrawled on her locker door, when boys wouldn't date her because they were afraid of being labeled "lame."

When Linda graduated high school, the only one who was there for her was her mother, Alice. Linda wasn't invited to any of the graduation parties. But she did get a scholarship to Middleton college, to study Business Administration, and she swore then and there that she would be a success.

But Middleton was rough for a small town girl, and Linda struggled desperately to stay afloat, while once again, everybody else seemed to only be there to party. When she wasn't at class or studying, she worked at any job she could find, mostly being a waitress. She didn't even go home for her father's funeral. The only thing the news of his death gave her was a numb relief.

But then, her mother married another man, even more abusive than Ed had been. Linda tried to help, but stretched between college, her jobs, and a lack of transportation(and her secret affair with Tom Griffin, her friend Patty's boyfriend,) something had to give, and it did.

Her mother Alice died when her new husband beat her to death, supposedly for not having dinner ready on time. He received a ten year sentence for manslaughter in the second degree. Linda, having raced home, stood alone at the funeral. The grass at the cemetery was a lush, almost obscene, green. When Linda climbed into the bus at the station, she never returned to Buford again.

Unaware of the storm in his drunken mother's mind, Sam grabbed at things in the hall, hurling them down at the slowly rising spirits. It was like throwing at jelly, they slowed slightly as they passed through the desolate forms, but only passed on through. Chris dragged his stumbling father up the hall, not even looking at Linda's white faced, dry eyed form. Fluffy's enraged hissing form was avoided by the specter's. Sam tried to get to the animal, but he couldn't reach it. The closer the ghost's got, the less energy he seemed to have, and he stumbled away from them. He bumped into his mothers unmoving form, she was panting rapidly, her eyes wild and blind, her word's almost incoherent, from her drunkenness and emotions. Things she had locked away for years raged in her mind.

"Marion, you bitch! Why did you always pick on me? Don't cry, Momma, don't cry, I'll get a good job, and we'll move away and be happy, you'll like it, we'll move so far away. Damm it, Dad, Mom loves you! Why do you always hurt her! Just leave us alone! Go to hell, and leave us all alone!"

Even with the peril facing him, Sam looked down on his mother, appalled. Not really used to thinking too much, the terrified boy seemed to see not only his mother, Linda, but his sister Sandi, and a third woman besides, cowering on the floor, muttering insanely.

"Mom? Who are you talking to? What's going on? Is that Sandi?"

He gasped and fell backwards. The distracted boy had been approached, and a phantom hand reached though his back. The pale fingers closed gently on his beating heart. Sam stared down at his chest, feeling the cold crawl through his veins, his hot blood slowly turning into an icy mush. He reached toward his terrified mother, the life in his eyes fading. His flushed skin faded into a pale whiteness. His brown eyes iced over, as he became a rigid, frozen statue. Linda hesitantly took his already cold hand. But, it was already too late.

Slowly, Sam Griffin's specter stepped forward out of his frozen corpse, his brown eyes now deep dark pools, staring at his mother, not with hate or fear, but only with a deep, eternal longing. He joined the crowd that thronged the upper hallway of the Griffin home, each eye gazing hungrily at Linda, but not one of them touched her. They simply walked by her, intent on the door that Chris and his crippled father had taken refuge behind. Linda stared at them in mute despair, not understanding why they had passed her by.

The sound of blowing snow faded away. The only thing Linda could her was the rapid beating of her own heart. The flickering snow light suddenly brightened, as if a flash had gone off behind her. Linda could hear the rustling of cloth behind her, and the already bitter chill deepened, feeling like a flame across her back. Her numb mind tried to hide, take refuge in it's drunkenness, but was pulled out to face what stood behind her.

Chris had piled everything he could move in his mothers den against the door, and had pushed the desk over as well. Now he and his father huddled against the wall. Tom shook in fear, even as Chris had acted. He had done nothing! Just like everything in his whole life! Those things outside had something to do with Sandi, he knew it. Was Sandi dead? His little girl, who had grown up so much like her mother? Linda had never spoken one word about where she had grown up, or her parents. Tom, who basically had always found it easier to let Linda run things. He had even gotten drunk a couple of times with Jake Morgendorffer, and the two men had shared stories of their controlling wives. Even allowing for the booze, Tom had to admit Jake's life sounded a bit better than his. Should he have opposed Linda, even a bit? Would that have helped things? Linda was so unlike his own mother, more dangerous, exciting even, but scary sometimes, too. When she had the pitiless look on her face, he had always gotten out of her way. Then, the house seemed to fill with an almost liquid silence, that filled the chilled air The wind outside faded away.

The small pale hands settled firmly on Linda's shaking shoulders, stilling her quivering body. The breath caught in her throat, as she was turned slowly but unstoppable around, still on her knees. The sheer cold bit into the skin of Linda's face almost like a sunburn. She trembled, her eyes stubbornly shut like a child's, but they slowly, relentlessly opened, almost against her will.

She stared ahead of her, her eyes slowly focusing. The patterns on a kimono of the purest silk took form on the trembling pool of her minds eye. Then they focused on the sleeves of the arms that held her, following them upward, to the slender shoulders, the long delicate neck, the fine boned face, and then ...

The eyes. Large, dark, bottomless pools that drew in all they saw, everyone they saw. Linda felt like she was falling upward into a dark starless sky. Her shallow soul trembled like the frailest of leaves as it tumbled through the deep void. She fell again, screaming, for what felt like an eternity.

A small point of light grew in her eyes, the only light in the whole universe of darkness. Over years of time, it grew brighter. It became first a star, then a disk, and then finally a planet. Linda accepted it all, questioning nothing, even as she fell though the sky, her body no more than the thinnest of threads. Clouds brushed by her, as a heavily wood ground rushed up at her. A crude cabin, surrounded by snow, a pale plume of smoke torn out of its thin stovepipe by the howling winds, seemed to pull at her, to grab her. Linda's form rushed into the cabin, where it came into an abrupt halt.

Helpless, silent, only able to see without being seen, Linda looked down at a nightmare.

Quinn huddled deep inside of her mind, refusing to listen to the hissing howls that filled her hearing. Slowly, unseen by the near comatose girl, the bars of her minds cage had changed. She crouched down inside a massive human skeleton. The gnawed bones were covered with blackened shreds of flesh. The only thing that shared her prison was a large, irregular lump of frozen meat that towered over her. A faint throb seemed to emerge from it at times.

Quinn moaned constantly. Tiffany's terrified face filled her thoughts. She struggled to remember the other girl alive, but couldn't shake the picture of Tiffany's begging. Or of the pleasure it had given her to hear the other girl beg.

Quinn's fingers pulled at her ears, as if she wanted to rip them off.

"No! No more! It wasn't my fault! It was that things! That thing in my head! Why is it doing this to me!"

_But I was the one who tore her throat out with my teeth._

"No," she sobbed, more and more weakly, "it wasn't me, not me, not me."

_Who ate Tiffany's face, if it wasn't me? Sandi?_

Quinn rolled over, looking at her prison.

"I'm inside a giants bones."

She looked at the huge pile of frozen flesh before her for a long minute, before the answer came to her.

"And his frozen heart."

The inescapable doom that had seemed to follow the girls engulfed Quinn, and she crawled over to the pile, reaching out to touch it. As she did, it steadily shrank, to fit neatly in the palm of her hand. She picked it up, staring at it. It throbbed steadily, the dull vibration running through her body, sounding in her own bones. Something gazed back at her, something powerful.

As she knelt there, she felt a warm glow from her other hand. Her dull vision followed it, seeing nothing, and then she knew what it was.

_Sandi._

_She's still alive._

_She's laying next to me, in the cabin._

Sandi's words, heard but not understood, drifted into her thoughts.

"I'm here with you."

Quinn's dazed mind tried to grab onto that promise, but it seemed to slip out of her feeble grasp. Unwillingly, her other hand shoved the lump of frozen meat into her mouth, and she easily swallowed it.

_The heart of the beast that dwells in darkness._

Quinn felt her own heart explode, her own bones shattered as her dying flesh reached outward, to seize the giant's dead and rotting bones for its own.

For a brief moment, all that Quinn had ever been passed before her. Then, there was only the darkness.

And the hunger.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter Thirty**

The howling wind shook the small car. Jane had never been so aware of so many small things at once. The faint sounds of the idling car's engine, the hum of the heater fan. The hiss of the snow blowing outside, and the rhythmic slap of the cars wipers. The barrel of the small pistol wavered in Jane's wide eyes, giving her an almost comical, cross-eyed look, if anybody in the car had been in a laughing mood.

Jane's lean body trembled. Her weary mind grappled with the conflicting emotions. Her close, intense friendship with Daria had supported her through all the weirdness. Shock after shock had beaten at her normally stoic spirit. Other than her brother, Trent, and her high school art teacher, Ms. Defoe, Jane had cared about few people. But Daria was the one, the one person who clicked into her life, giving them such a close relationship that even they had never understood it.

Even in the blowing snow she had been sweating. In the heat of the small car she stank of smoke and sweat, with her black hair plastered limply across her forehead. Her body trembled in nervous reaction. She wanted to just break down and cry, but she held grimly to her purpose, knowing there wasn't any time left to lose.

She gulped, knowing any sign of violence might get her killed by the nervous, frightened man holding the gun to her face. Jane was seldom a diplomatic or even sympathetic person, but she rallied herself.

"Ah, Mr. Smits? Um, Mayor Smits? Um, please? I uh, need your help, please!"

In a quavering, almost falsetto voice, Smits replied suspiciously "What?"

"Please, my best friend, my only friend, is in real trouble, and I have to help her. I know her mother Helen really, uh, really attacked you at that press conference, but they all really need your help now. I think, something is killing them in their house, I don't know what, but it's really bad!"

Looking at Smits pale, round, face, Jane saw confusion and fear chasing each other across it in waves. Jane wanted to just scream, attack this weak man, drive to Daria's, but held herself in check. She needed his help.

"Sir, please, just drive me over to their house. If I'm wrong, if they're okay, you can throw me in jail. I'll say I attacked you, but please just, please, let me help my friend!"

It was the sheer passionate desperation in her voice that seemed to convince him. He stared closely at her shaking form for a long minute, then, very slowly replaced his small pistol inside his jacket pocket. Still looking over at her out of the corner of his eye, he said."All right, but, where exactly do they live?"

Jane, her voice still shaking from her emotional storm, said "Just straight up this street. 1111 Glen Oaks Lane, it's a two story, red brick house."

She sank back into the seat, then realized he was just staring at her.

"What is it?"

"Miss, you need to put on your seat belt."

Jane stared at him, saw he was serious, and slowly buckled herself in.

Smits, satisfied, started to drive.

Jane stared out the side window, listening to the steady clanking of the snow chains on the car as it crawled up the street. Smits glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, but concentrated on his driving. Jane knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the things she had seen were real, not a dream or hallucination. She doubted that Smit's would even go in the house with her. She despised politicians, like many Americans' did, but was suddenly glad that at least one person might know what had happened to her that night, even if it were a total stranger like this man.

The lightless houses on either side of the street crawled by the slowly moving car. The blinding snow, the total darkness made everything seem to be unreal. It was almost a shock when Daria's house seemed to appear out of the swirling snow. Smit's pulled up to the curb, leaving the engine running. The snow-covered mounds of the Morgendorffer's cars, Jake's blue Lexus, and Helen's big red SUV, were barely visible in the driveway, parked as usual outside.

Like the other houses, the lights were all out. The blowing snow made it hard to see, but the house appeared to be intact, no broken windows, no forced doors.

_Of course,_ Jane thought, _those things just walked through the walls at home. What if they are here? Do I burn Daria's house down too? As a defense that leaves a bit to be desired. How would Daria put it? "Another such victory will leave me undone?"_ _Some Greek king said that, I think she said once._

Jane stared at the door handle.

_What am I going to do? I, I really don't want to die today. I want to live! I want to go to college, I want to have friends and lovers, live my life! But, If I don't go inside, I'll lose Daria, I'll lose my first real . . . friend. Damm it, Daria! Why are things so hard to understand!_

Staring out the windowJane almost saw Daria standing there, her face slowly twisting into what both girls had called her "Mona Lisa" smile. That calm, quiet smile, that Jane had seen so seldom, only when everything was going right for her, that she was on top of the world, and feeling fine.

_Well, my "Freaking Friend, " Jane Lane is coming to the rescue! You still owe me that tour of Raft University you promised me, anyway. I want to see you smirk at me just one more time._

Still, opening the car door was one of the hardest things she had ever doneTo her surprise, the sound was echoed on the other side of the car, and the howling wind filled the small vehicle with a cloud of snow crystals that momentarily blinded her. She stared at the stout figure of the mayor as he stood there, visible shaking, on the other side of the car.His teeth were chattering, but he plowed resolutely through the deep snow to the curbside of the car where Jane was standing. Jane looked at him, and incredibly, he blushed, and looked down at his feet, almost like a child, not meeting her eyes.

"I, well, I couldn't let you go in there alone, I'm afraid, I'm sorry, Miss, uh?"

"Lane, Jane. I mean, my name's Jane, Jane Lane."

"Well, Miss Lane, let's check on your friend."

Side by side, the two unlikely companions turned and stared at the Morgendorffer house. The house was barely visible, even this close. The front yard was buried under drifts of deep, powdery snow, hiding the path to the front door. The snow shifted slowly, almost as if the drifts were a great beast, slowly breathing. Columns of ice crystals danced on top of the snow, almost like the ones which had yielded the small army which had attacked Jane's home earlier.

Jane stiffened. An eerie whitish light glowed out of one of the upstairs windows, on the far left of the front of the house. A frequent visitor to the Morgendorffer home, Jane knew it was Quinn's bedroom. The light shone coldly, vaguely resembling the dancing curtains of the Northern Lights she had once seen in a National Geographic magazine.

Jane shuddered, then awkwardly moved through the deep snow to the front door. She and Smits waded through the drifts slipping and falling until they finally thumped against the thick wood of the door. Jane reached out to try the doorknob, and to her surprise, it crumbled in her gloved hand, sifting away to a fine powder. Even after what she had already gone through that night, she stared at her empty hand in disbelief, slowly shaking her head. What could do that to metal? The sheer cold surrounding her provided its own answer.

Besides her, Smits looked at Jane's white face. Looking ahead at the door, he laid the gloved palm of his hand against the door, and to their surprise, it swung slowly open. A blast of a pure, almost liquid cold poured of the house, undiluted by the wind outside. It was like being drowned. Jane and the mayor were driven to their knees by the raw power of it.

Jane recovered first, though she felt that her skin, even her eyes would freeze solid. As she forced her eyes open and looked around her, she gasped with first pain, and then, awe. The familiar living room and stairs to the second floor were sparkling with frost. The walls and ceiling seemed to fall away from her, vanishing into the sky, until Jane thought she was alone, standing on an endless field of ice.

Stars shone steadily in the black sky above her. Small pale lights glowed dimly in the distance. Looking down, she saw only a loose covering of snow covering the ice field, along with . . .

_Oh, no . . . _Jane thought, _Please . . . _

She reached down, and gently brushed away the snow from a bump in the ice, only to see the face of Jake Morgendorffer, Daria's father. The ice was crystal clear, and Jane saw bodies as far as she could see, trapped under her.

"Miss Lane? Are you all right?"

Smits touch brought Jane back into the living room. He stared at her in concern.

"I'm sorry, Miss Lane, but you disappeared for a minute, right in front of me! When I stepped forward to look for you, you suddenly reappeared! What happened to you?"

Jane stammered, "I, I don't know, I was in some other place, with people frozen under the ice, and, never mind! Let's just find Daria! I'm close to going crazy right now."

Smits nodded, and they moved carefully into the house, walking lightly, staring nervously around them. Ice crystals frozen into the carpet crunched under each step. Jane couldn't shake the illusion that kept nibbling at her mind, that she was advancing into something different, that this was no longer just a friends home, but something quite removed from a house.

They stopped at the base of the stairs, and looked upward. The horizon retreated from them, the stairway seeming to go on for eternity, through the star filled sky. She gripped Smits hand fiercely. He didn't see what she did, he kept her grounded. Jane focused her attention directly ahead of her.

_I just need to walk up the stairs, turn to the left, and down the hall to Daria's room, that's all I have to do. I've done it lots of times. Just find Daria, walk down the stairs and out the door. Don't think about anything else, just think about doing this. Find Daria, take her to the hospital, nothing else._

Jane saw a white shining mist pouring down the stairwell. She gasped in the frigid cold, even

worse than what she faced outside. As she placed her foot on the first step, two things happened. Smits vanished. As she grabbed futilely for him, the whole house abruptly trembled. She grabbed at the railing, then gaped as slowly, majestically, the room started to revolve around the stairwell she was standing on.

Jane sank to her knees, breathing heavily. Closing her eyes was the only thing that helped her with the nausea that had overcome her. She gulped several times, then placing the palms of her gloved hands firmly on the ice crusted carpeting covering the stairs, she slowly climbed upward.

The stairs stretched on and on, up and up. Jane had walked up these same stairs' hundreds of times before, hardly even noticing them as she did so. Now, eyes closed, she could swear that she was climbing Mt. Everest. The sparkling mist burned her exposed face like the fire from a sparkler.

Jane decided to chance a look. She struggled a long painful moment, at first afraid that her eyes had frozen shut. Then they popped open almost with a snap, her vision was blurry at first, then cleared, and Jane gasped, at first in stark terror, and then, a quiet awe that shook her to the depths of her artistic soul.

She was climbing in a river of stars. The glittering specks of light flowed around her gloved hands and knees as they rushed past her, down the now unseen stairs from above her. Looking around her, stars were all she could see. Some glowed steadily, but others twinkled like gems. Certain groups formed patterns, human, animals and others. Jane stared in rapture, the pure beauty of the sight washed away her fear and fatigue for a brief, magical moment. Jane felt like a child again, seeing a rainbow for the first time.

The moment passed. Daria's danger beckoned her again, and with a deep sigh, Jane firmly closed her eyes, and started her climb again.

Stacy's sobbing and screaming had finally stopped. She just laid there in her skin tight prison, hearing the hissing snow as it blew over the deep drifts above her, the faint creaking of the trees as they wearily bent to the punishing blast of the winter winds. The quiet trickle of running water, the creak of ice shifting in a nearby stream.

Evenly pressing against her bare skin, Stacy felt the grittiness or dirt and sand. The smooth and coarse bulges of rock and gravel pressed deeply into her soft skin. She slowly sank into a state of passive awareness, accepting all she heard and felt. What she heard and felt increased slowly. She felt the sharp ping as the metal of Sandi's car reacted to the cold and pressure of the covering snow, the groaning of the canvas convertible roof as it slowly bent down.

The crackle of flames reached her ears as she heard the sound of the small fire in the cabin, the popping of sparks. She heard Sandi's groaning, which peaked in little gasps as the thing inside her womb twisted, casually hurting its helpless host. Sandi grunted and bit back screams at the pain.

Quinn's feeble whimpering was very faint. Her labored breathing had become a strong panting hiss, almost a snarl. Stacy's sharpened senses felt the lustful fury, the bestial hunger pouring out of the tortured form of her friend.

Stacy jerked away from her tortured friends in horror and shame. She slowly opened her eyes, seeing nothing at first, just harsh, hurtful darkness. Then, as before, the soil grew slowly transparent. She hung in space, still unmoving, like a fly trapped in amber. She saw the deeply thrusting roots of trees all around her, as they dug into the yielding soil and rock.

Far beneath her, like the ocean floor, she saw the solid form of bedrock, the hard granite blocking her vision. Against her will, her eyes sought the cabin. This new Stacy wasn't really surprised to see the deeply running cave underneath it, or the pitiful objects it had contained for centuries. She saw the thick swarm of human spirits swirling around the thing Quinn had become, and their fear and hate of their captor.

The ghost's faint mumbling was hard to make out, their words only a monotonous whispering. Stacy suddenly latching onto one thread of sound that sounded familiar, a intense, quiet, utterly hopeless sobbing.

"Stacy, why! Stacy, Quinn killed me! I'm, I'm dead! I'm dead forever! Why! Why me! I wasn't a bad person! You said you would get us some help! I trusted you, you and Quinn! It's so cold here. It's so lonely! The other ones can't hear me, and they don't listen to me! I'm so alone here, and I can't leave this place! Why me, Stacy, why me?"

Stacy's eyes filled with tears hearing Tiffany's utter and complete despair. The tears from her eyes flowed into the soil that shrouded her. But, unable to speak, she could only cry along with her murdered friend. After a very long time, their weeping slowed and came to a stop, and there was a long silence.

_Sta-cy? Is that you? Can you hear me?_

_Yes! Yes, Tiffany, I can hear you! Are you all right?_

_No! I'm dead, Stacy! Quinn murdered me! She killed me, she trapped me in here with these, these things. I can't ever go home again!_ _None of us can!_

_What do you mean, Tiffany?_

_We're dead, Stacy! Don't you get it? We are dead! You and me. But not Quinn and Sandi! Sandi's only alive until her mother says she loves her, and Quinn is immortal! She's an immortal monster! I saw the others, I saw how they all died. I want to go crazy, but I can't! The thing that took Quinn did it. It killed them all! It killed your Snow Lady, too! That's why she's trapped here!_ _Its a real monster, and when it wakes up, it's going to go to Lawndale!_

_How do you know all this, Tiffany?_

_They told me, the other ghosts, like I am, now. But he told me the most, her husband did..The one that brought her here_. _She almost escaped, Stacy, she almost escaped, but it killed her._

_Tiffany, I've got to know what happened, please, tell me what happened! This might help us!_

Tiffany sighed deeply.

_We're dead, Stacy, we're de-ad. Nothing's going to help us, ever again._

Stacy almost literally blew up.

_God damn all it to hell! You just listen to me, Miss Tiffany Blum-Deckler! You and I might be dead, but that doesn't mean we can't do anything! Now, you tell me what you know right now, or I'll, I'll, Ohh!_

_I'm sorry, Stacy, I'm sorry._

_I am too, baby, I am too, now please, just tell me, okay?_

_Well, he said he met het on a mountain?_

As Tiffany said that, Stacy suddenly saw a majestic peak towering in her mind and a quiet voice said, "Fuji-yama.' _Mountain of the Goddess of Fire._


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter Thirty One**

Linda's spirit hung in the air above her daughter inside the old cabin, staring in horror. Sandi lay on the dusty floor on her back, her legs drawn up against her body. Her clenched fists' pounded the floor in her pain. Sandi's enormous stomach bulged in an obscene parody of a normal pregnancy. Linda screamed at the agony her daughter was in. Was this why Sandi had vanished? To have a baby? Linda struggled to understand what she was seeing. Sandi had certainly not been wearing any loose baggy clothing lately. Just long sleeves and slacks, and shirts with high necks. Nothing unusual for winter weather. Or for a girl trying to hide the bruises on her arms and legs. Or her neck. Like the ones Linda's father had put on her own mother.

_I did that? Did I really do all that to her? Did I let the boys do that, too? Why didn't Tom . . . ? _

Sandi's lips were tattered from her gnashing teeth. Thin streaks of blood ran down her chin. Sandi's blouse and slacks had been ripped completely off her body. Sandi's wide eyes were encircled with deep dark hollows. Her skin, stretched tightly across her bones, was a pale, pasty yellow, which easily showed the bruises Sandi had all over her body. Thin streams of a yellowish red liquid oozed sullenly from the tips of her distended breasts. Blood slowly seeped out of her body between her jerking legs. Sandi's huge belly twitched and jerked. Linda stared numbly at her daughter.

Sandi's bare stomach bulged slowly out in Linda's direction. A small face, distorted by the skin pulled tightly across it, stared at Linda for a long minute, then sank back away from the surface. Sandi's mother just hung there, silent, apathetic.

Lying next to Sandi on the cold dirty floor was a massive shape, all arms and legs, curled into a fetal position. Its breath hissed out loudly through it's yellowed, jagged, uneven teeth. Its knees and elbows were swollen, as were its massive feet. One huge claw jutted out of the center of each one. A scattering of bones lay on the floor around the creature. Oddly, like a child, it cradled a small round object to its emaciated ribs like a favorite toy. Long, silky black hair shielded it from Linda's view.

The creature's unseen eyes bulged under its yellowed, pasty skin. Bloody tears seeped out, running down the creature's cheeks. No matter how long Linda stared at the creature, it never really grew distinct. Its image wavered, like that of a far off mirage seen in the heat of summer.

Then something flickered in the corner of her eye. Linda struggled to turn, to see what was going on, fighting for her daughters sake for the first in a long time.

_I, I can do this! Sandi, Tom, Sam, Chris? Mom? What's happening to us? Did I cause all this to happen? No, it wasn't my fault! Sandi, why weren't you stronger? Tom, I loved you! Why did you always cave in to me? Why didn't you show some backbone for once and say something!_

A clear, cold voice sounded behind the distraught woman's spirit.

"Because you didn't want them too."

_A_ pale glow slowly appeared before Linda, hanging in midair. The transparent image flickered, wavering like the light of a candle. Its dirty ragged clothing hung loosely on it. Its long, silky black hair flowed toward Linda, hiding its face, only showing a flash of gleaming bone. Dark, reddish stains ran down its shoulders, and the front of the thin jacket it wore. It spoke again, and each expressionless word jabbed Linda's soul like a dagger. Tiffany's slow pronunciation of her words sounded like the rattling of chains.

"It's good to see you, Mrs. Griffin. Sandi will be so glad to see you. I wish I could go home, and see my mom, but I can't leave this place anymore."

"Tiffany? Is that you? What's happening here? What happened to you? Where's Stacy and Quinn?"

A flash of teeth was quickly concealed behind the ever flowing strands of hair.

"Yes, it's me, Mrs. Griffin. I'm de-ad now, you know. Quinn killed me, because of you."

The accusation was like a goad to Linda's tormented spirit.

"What!"

"Quinn crawled over to me, and ripped out my throat. She bit me, but Sandi did it first._ **It** _made them do it."

Tiffany's figure laughed wildly, showing a brief glimpse of what the flowing hair concealed.

"Stacy is still trying to get out, to find help, but why bother? I can hear the other ones now, all around us. They're all crazy. You know that? You know why? It's because we're all dead!"

Tiffany's clawlike hands reached for Linda.

"We were friends, you know that? Maybe we weren't much, but we still tried!"

Faces and figures appeared to surround the two women. Men, women, and children, mostly Native American, but a few dressed in early Colonial clothing swirled around them, silently. A thick cloud of despair, of unending torment poured out of them.

"You see them, Mrs. Griffin? That's all we are, that's all that's left of us! We're trapped here, with that, that thing! That's not even the worse of it! Do you know who that is?" Tiffany screamed, pointing at the creature besides Sandi.

The tattered eyeless remains of Tiffany's features glared at the helpless woman. Her flowing hair whipped back for a brief instant, then again shrouded her.

"But now, Stacy and I are dead! We can't go home anymore! Sandi is dying, and look at Quinn!

She's going to . . . "

A hissing roar filled the small cabin

Tiffany's voice showed a flash of fear, and she faded away. The creature stirred, stretched its long limbs lazily, and slowly opened its bulging eyes. They were a brilliant blue that pierced the shadows of the small cabin like searchlights. For one brief instant they plucked on Linda, drawing her inside the creature. Linda felt like she was being pulled inside a volcano. Animal rage, inhuman lust, and a very human hunger were like fangs pulling strips from her weakening spirit. Linda could smell old rot and decay, she saw stacks of moldering bones, human skulls everywhere, their tops ripped off, arm and leg bones split down the center.

A massive paw approached her, holding a hideous gift. A pulpy mass of curdled gray flesh, awash in an emptied skull, floating in the bloody broth.

_Gift. Eat. Learn._

A hissing whisper promised her, tempted her.

_Save your child,_ it hissed softly, _save her son._

Far away, barely heard through the hissing, Linda could hear a tiny, shrill voice.

"No, Mrs. Griffin, don't do it! It's a trap! It's a lie! We're all lost already! Get out of here! It wants loose, to kill everybody!"

The familiar voice stirred Linda.

"Quinn?"

Like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, Linda saw a tiny picture. A figure in a cage with thick, white curved bars, screaming helplessly, vainly stretching her arms toward the other woman. Her once reddish hair was streaked with white, her lovely face was lined with scars, pulled tightly over underlying bone.

"Stop this! You're still alive! Save Daria, please! She's dying! Please help her!"

Then in a surge of raw hate Quinn shouted at the older woman.

"Haven't you done enough to all of us! Get out of here!"

Linda was shoved out of the cabin, high into the sky. The swirling clouds battered her spectral forms. She tumbled helplessly, feeling only a thin thread, pulling weakly at her, back to her body, far below in her house.

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Jane's world had been reduced to the movement of her hands and knees, the stinging sparks of cold burning her exposed skin. Only by keeping her mind focused, by picturing herself climbing stairs, the staircase to Daria's room, could she keep going, keep moving.

All around her she heard strange sounds, sounds of animals, water running, the murmur of almost human voices. The voices were pure music. She couldn't understand the words, but each one battered her, like a hammer forging a tool on a forge. Her spirit grew harder, like the strength of steel. Her Lane heritage of artistic striving was being honed, sharpened like a sword, by something she didn't dare look at.

"A sharp sword indeed, woman, one of my finest."

As Jane paused, the voice thundered, "No, keep moving! If you hesitate in your climb in the river of stars, all will be lost! You will be trapped in the outer darkness, where even gods fear to tread!"

Jane scrambled on, panting. The thin air now seemed to invigorate her, filling her shaking limbs with a clean, warm heat, an almost reckless exuberance. Filled with this new strength, Jane screamed out at her unseen helper.

"Please, help me! People are dying at home! Can you stop all this!"

"I can but show you what should be done. This is a matter of fear and desperation, where forces were stirred beyond the control of all involved. The strength is yours, woman, as it always has been. Search your heart. Save your friend, the little wise one."

"Daria?"

"Go, Jane Lane, use your heart and soul to guide you. Things happen here which shake the world, but for you, here, now, save your friend." The presence started to fade away.

"No!"Jane shouted.

"No?" the voice thundered, its power licking at Jane. "You seek to command me?"

"I, I just wanted to say," Jane gulped. "Thank you."

A vast quiet stilled the noise of the river. Not amusement, but a deep appreciation seemed to fill the world.

"I am seldom recognized, or even thanked. Go with power, Jane Lane, and remember, you will need your other two friends to help you."

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Stacy raged in her underground tomb. She felt the creature's madness, saw how it poisoned Tiffany's thoughts, turned her natural bitterness into a raw hate. She still couldn't move a muscle, and she couldn't reach Tiffany any more, only hear Tiffany's fear turning into a choking rage. The creature grew stronger, and looked down at Stacy, it's blue eyes easily piercing the rock and soil. It gently placed it's small ball on Sandi's heaving chest, brushing the long dark hair back from the skulls face.

Stacy saw the faces of children flicker through the surface of it's mind, vaguely recognized some of them as children she or the other members of the former Fashion Club had babysat for. Particularly the face of Tricia Gupty. The creature carefully hunted through Quinn's mind for it's prey. The face of every child Quinn had ever cared for flickered, the massive creature sniffing eagerly. It shambled to its feet, it's tall gaunt form cramped in the small cabin. It grinned down at the captive Stacy, turned sideways, and vanished.

But Stacy heard it's hissing roar now outside the cabin, moving towards Lawndale. The fading echo of Quinn's screams slowly died.


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter Thirty Two**

Stacy could only watch helplessly as Tiffany descended into madness. Tiffany had nearly attacked Linda, but she had been scared away by the creature that Quinn had become. What had Sandi called it? A wendigo? Stacy's new senses had shied away from the massive creature. It had reeked of lust, decay, and an ancient hunger. It had been tied to this place for a long time, hundreds of years. She had seen the cloud of phantoms tied to the creature, in much the same way the Snow Woman's victims were tied to her. She had heard of the creatures called Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, but what little she knew about them didn't compare at all to the fiend that had stolen Quinn's body.

Flesh-eating giants. Stacy's mind fumbled with scraps of fairy tales heard as a child, or read. What was that rhyme? "Fie fi fo fum?" Giants that ate children. Monsters that whispered from outside windows, or from dark forests. Even with all that had happened to her, Stacy had a problem with the picture she saw. How much of what was called fairy tales were real? The monster wanted children that was one reason it had picked Quinn, wasn't it? The creature pawing, like a dog picking up a scent, through Quinn's mind shook Stacy. All those children!

Stacy fumbled with her new state, fumbling to use powers she didn't really understand. Still, the Snow Lady was powerful, and she was still a slave to the beast. Why? Tiffany's mention of the Snow Woman's husband came to her. The Snow Woman was cursed, a ghost that killed people lost in snow or storms. But she seemed to have a special hatred for men, luring them away, to die lost and alone. But she could still fall in love, have children, live as a human woman with a husband. Until he broke an unspoken rule, named her as what she was, a ghost, the temptress of the snows.

The mountain where Tiffany said she had met her last mortal husband, Mt. Fuji-yama. Mountain of the Goddess of Fire. Once again, the towering peak rose in her mind. Goddess of Fire? Why would the Snow Woman have ever even gone near a place like that? Wouldn't fire be the worse threat? A soft whisper arose unbidden, wrapped itself around Stacy's motionless body.

_To melt her frozen tears, for even the dead must cry._

The quiet words gently, sadly filled Stacy's soul.

_Who said that?_

_Nothing now, nobody that might help you._

_Are you the one Tiffany talked to?_

_Yes, I spoke with your friend. She was very afraid, and I pitied her. She was so young, to have met such a fate. It felt good, to ease her sorrows._

Stacy tried to focus on Sandi, but the strange twisting haze shrouding her last remaining friend was worse than ever. Sandi's bones glowed with dark power, almost like neon black light bulbs. The small flame of Sandi's life was so faint, barely seen. The grey haze twisted, almost like a living thing, hiding Sandi at times from sight. The whirling vortex deep inside her had grown enormously, looking like a gigantic whirlpool. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop looking at it. She could feel the pull, the hypnotic command to throw herself inside it, into the dark . . . door? A door to where? Or was it, from where?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jane continued her crawling climb, still feeling the high she had gotten from her encounter with her unknown benefactor. He had called her a "sword."That meant he was using her. Still, at least, it had helped her, was helping her save Daria. Yes, like Prince Charming saving Sleeping Beauty! She wryly pictured Daria's indignation of being the damsel in distress, while Jane came to her rescue. A painting of Daria as Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by Lawndale High faculty as the Seven Dwarves, while Jane rode to the rescue on her white horse.

"I just hope I can tell her that, sometime," Jane thought, "Just focus on that, up the stairs, crawl down the hall to Quinn's room, find Daria, grab her, drag her down the stairs, where the city mayor is waiting to drive us to the hospital. Will I have to see her Dad's body? I really liked Jake. Helen should have been there too. Will I see her? No! Don't think about that! He said, I could still save Daria, "the little wise one." I have to save her, if only to see the expression on her face when she finds out something called her that."

"Am I really crawling in the Milky Way? How? That's an entire freaking galaxy! He called it a river of stars. I've got to remember those colors, those patterns. If I could only paint something holding at least a little bit of what I saw there! If he hadn't told me to close my eyes, I think I would have just crouched there forever."

Then, the crawling Jane abruptly bumped into a wall. The sudden change confused her for a moment, but by felling around with her gloved hands, she discovered she was facing a partially open door, inside of which was a tiled floor. She sighed with relief. She was at the bathroom the sisters used at the head of the stairs. All she had to do was turn to the right, down the hall toward Quinn's and Daria's rooms. Somehow, she was sure she would find Daria at the source of the trouble, at whatever was happening in Quinn's room.

Jane crawled carefully up the wide hall, pushing against the cold, almost liquid pressure which grew stronger and stronger The carpet crunched under her gloved hands, the noise faintly chiming in the hall. Then her hands bumped into something unexpected. Feeling carefully, Jane discovered it was the broken pieces of a door, in a doorway on the right hand side of the hall. She had arrived at Quinn's room. The end of what had ben for her an endless journey startled her, and she hesitated, looking down at the carpet, and slowly, painfully, forced her eyes open again.

A glowing, crystal studded mist blew past her, flowly like water around her arms and legs. Quinn's formerly pink bedroom carpet was a mass of snow so hard it felt like rock. Jane slowly raised her eyes, taking in Quinn's room. The mist dazzled her eyes, shrouding everything, the flashing lights almost blinding her. But she did see two thing. A dimming pillar of snow was fading away, over by the front window that overlooked the street. There was also a tangled huddle of bodies at the foot of Quinn's canopied bed. Jane stared at the pile in dread. Jane knew for sure it was them. She had no doubt it was Daria and her parents. They would have stood together. She had found the Morgendorffers.

Jake laid facing her, a look of pleading on his face, his hand outstretched. His eyes were frozen open, and blood had run down his square chin, contrasting sharply with his white skin. Helen laid across him. Fear and a savage desperation etched her features, her teeth were bared, eyes wide. The frost glinted on their hair and eyelashes.

Daria lay just beyond her parents. Her large black rimmed glass's had fallen to the floor next to her. She was face down, and the shattered piece's of a golf club were on the carpet next to her hand. Her brown hair looked frozen solid, and her face was turned away from Jane. Jane stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. She slowly reached out her trembling hand, then pulled it back, and slowly crawled over to the side Daria was facing.

Daria's face was a pale white, with a fine network of cracks visible. Bright red blood slowly seeped out of them, as well as from her cracked lips. Her eyes, mercifully, were closed. Jane just stared at her. She had been so sure she would get here in time. The warmth in her body suddenly blazed higher, like a well stoke furnace. She felt it twisting inside her, like a serpent of flame, coiling sensuously around her spine. What had that strange voice given her?

She slipped off her glove, and gently touched Daria's cheek. Daria's skin felt brittle, and blood started to seep out there. Daria trembled violently for a moment, let out a small gasp, her eyes fluttered, and then opened, looking directly at Jane. She struggled to speak. Jane put her hand under Daria's head, helping her, but she sank back down again, still staring at Jane's face. Finally, she whispered, "Why? Just tell me, why?" Her eyes closed, and her head rolled limply to the side. Jane felt her cold body grow limp. Jane just held on, staring at her small boned face, before she started crying, hunched over the body of her only friend.

"Jane."

It was the faintest of whispers, so barely heard Jane almost didn't catch it. Daria seemed to grow colder in her arms.

"Jane."

"Who is it! Show yourself!"

Daria's cold body stirred in Jane's hands. As she stared without understanding, Daria's eyes open, and she looked steadily at her friend. But the voice than came from her bleeding lips wasn't Daria's.

"Jane."

It was Helen, her mothers.

"Helen! What the ...!"

"Jane, please be quiet, there isn't much time! Daria's been blasted out of her body, she's wandering, terrified, in the abyss. It's a horrible place! You've got to let go, follow her, and bring her back. I understand a little of what's going on, now, but I can't do much, and I have to find Jake and Quinn, too."

Helen's vibrant voice, dimmed, faded.

"Please, Jane, you're our friend, Jake and I always loved you, for what you gave to Daria that we never could, please, save my daughter. It's all up to you."

"Helen, I don't understand! How do I let go? A trance or something? What do I have to do!"

Daria's lifeless body slumped in Jane's hands, and Jane knew for sure she was dead.

"Daria!"

The scream echoed through the empty house. The bright red blood on Daria's face glowed eerily, almost like a light. The fire in Jane blazed once again, fiercely.

_No, it couldn't be that, could it?_

_What would she do for Daria? How far would she go?_

_My little amiga, my one true friend._

_Please, if anybody is listening, give me strength, give me power! I'll do anything it takes! I'll be your sword, I'll fight your battle, just save my friend._ _Gaia, Jesus, Buddha, anybody! Please help me save her!_

And then a name she didn't know appeared to her, along with a face, a vibrant face of power and glory, far, far more than human. And ironically, far less.

Susa-no-o, also called, "The Impetuous Male. " The rival to his sister, Ama-terasu, the Sun Goddess. His wild nature blazed into the room, his black hair and beard writhing like snakes, hero and villain both to his fellow spirits of the Shinto pantheon. He was the unfettered, uncontrolled male principal of creation itself, balanced only by his sisters feminine power, a power that balanced his wildness.

Jane stared at him.

"I'm your sword: she finally said.

His wildness blazed at her, the vibrant power shaking her.

"My sword, yes, to solve my sins, my mistakes!" His voice shook her slim body like a reed in the wind.

"What do I do, then? How do I save Daria?"

"Taste her life, then ask me for death!"

A life for a life, then, from this most untrustworthy of deities, this shaker of the status quo. Jane sighed, finally understanding Helen's cryptic message. She sighed.

"Alright, let's do it!"

Jane locked her lips to Daria's, her tongue flickering into Daria's mouth, tasting the coldness in it, the blood weeping from Daria's every pore. She heard the quiet rasping as Susa-no-o drew his long sword, and felt the sharp pain as it plunged through her body and Daria's, locking them together in death.

And then she heard, and felt, nothing at all.


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter Thirty Three**

Grey-haired Lester Gupty checked the doors and windows of his two-story home for the tenth time that night. The normally calm husband and father was dressed as warmly as possible in the coldness of his home. The electricity kept flickering on and off, making it hard to heat his house. His wife Lauren and their two children, Tricia and Tad, were in the master bedroom, huddled together on the bed. Tricia was terrified from the nightmares she'd been having the last several days. Tad hadn't dreamed of anything, but his older sister's nervousness had affected him too. Quinn Morgendorffer's disappearance with her friends at the start of this incredible storm had really told on the children. That's all it was, Lester told himself, their natural concern for another human being.

Lester nervously hefted the small hammer he had started carrying around on his frequent checks of the house. It was the closest thing to a weapon he had in his home, other than a few knives in the kitchen. Those were too easy to hurt yourself with, he had told himself. Still he couldn't explain to himself why he had pushed furniture up against every door to the outside. He checked the kitchen again. Every pot and pan was filled with water, and he and Lauren had started to ration the food available. The water was still running, and there was plenty of snow outside, but the stories his grandparents had told him of their experiences in Poland under Nazi occupation warned him to be careful.

Lester shook his head, remembering his trip to talk to his neighbors about the possibility of sharing their food, or even moving into some of the better built homes. Most of them hadn't even answered their doors, and Lester honestly hoped that they were all right. Several other had been openly suspicious of his motives, but had bluntly refused, some holding baseball bats or fireplace pokers. One man had even held his rifle in plain sight. Lester had nervously half expected a bullet in the back, all the way back home. What was happening? These were the same people who got together for cookouts and the weekends!

It was this strange storm, that's all it was he told himself. People were getting that thing he had read about, that cabin fever depression. Like people got in the old days, before television and cars. He had sometimes thought of those time, thinking that it would be wonderful, just the family together for three months, not seeing anybody else while the family enjoyed the closeness.

The glass on the window of the back door shivered, the frost-covered pane catching the dim light in the house eerily.

The wind sighed, the crystals of snow flashing as they blew past his home. Lester stared outside, entranced by their cold beauty. All he could see was the snow, swirling into strange shapes that it held for a few seconds before it collapsed. Was this what a winter had been like before the world had been covered with cities and highways? This part of North America had once been covered with thick forests, and great empty plains. Tad had once found an arrowhead in the yard, and they looked it up in the dictionary, finding out about the tribes which had once lived here.

What had their lives been like, during these long, cold, winters? With thin clothing made out of animal skins, using only a flimsy bow and flint headed arrows to feed their family, the constant search for food? Lester wondered just how bad things might get here. Surely, the storm would stop, and the roads would be cleared!

The tone of the wind changed outside, becoming a soft hissing, like the breath of a great beast. Lester stiffened, staring at the back door, suddenly aware of how flimsy it was. Great Beast? Why had he thought that? Sure, there were woods and mountains outside Lawndale, but nothing dangerous! Rabbits, crows, a few deer! No mountain lions or wildcats, no bears! They lived in a suburb! It was just this storm, that's all it was!

Great Beast? Why was that phrase thundering in his mind like it was? There were no beasts here! Still, Lester couldn't keep his gaze off the trembling panel of glass in the back door. What were those manlike things that were supposed to live in the Rocky Mountains? Yeti? No, those were from the Himalayas. This was a Native American word. Oh, yes. Sasquatch. But that was all superstition, fraud, people wearing suits to impress tourists, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

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Lauren trembled, but refused to say anything. They were all awake, lying fully dressed under the covers in the master bedroom. Tricia whimpered as she was cuddled next to her mother. Tad was restless, and kept sliding out from under the covers to peek out the second story window, gazing out into the blowing snow. His gloved hands constantly ran up and down the polished wood of his baseball bat, seeking reassurance and comfort.

The battery powered radio crackled quietly next to the bed, easy listening music leaking through, a sign that the outside world was still there. Lauren held tightly to her daughter. Tricia kept drifting off to sleep, but was afraid to. She kept murmuring, "Quinn? Is that you? Please go away! I can't help you now! You scare me! I'm so sorry, but go away! You're so old now, please, I liked you, don't hurt me, don't hurt me!"

Lauren was completely confused. Why had the children's former sitter become a monster in her daughters dreams? Tad stared down at his sister, confused as well.

"Mom, why is she talking like that? Quinn never hurt either one of us when she took care of us, she just talked on the phone all the time, or did her homework."

"I don't know, Tad, I don't know. She's been really worried about Quinn ever since this storm started. Maybe it's that winter depression people get when they can't go outside, or see other people."

"But why did she say Quinn was so old now? Quinn wasn't that old, just eighteen or so, I think."

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It strode over the snow-covered hills, the paltry trees. The storm of the cold one didn't bother it at all. The gaunt scarecrow figure easily broke off the tops of trees in it's passing, laughing once again at its strength and power. A small deer bounded across its path, and with a bound it was upon it! The deer ran frantically, bounding gracefully through the thick snow, but the massive beast slammed through it, easily catching the fleeing animal. The doe's spine snapped like a twig, its soft brown eyes quivered in pain. It's massive clawed hand's tore into the soft belly of the animal, ripping loose the animal's organs, shoveling them into its mouth. Blood spattered the white snow, ran down the beast's bare flesh. It howled in delight at the kill, for it was raw, unrestrained hunger.

It didn't think as men thought, though it could speak with them, and had, in the dim past. It was as much of the land around it as the earth and sky. It reared its skeletal frame to its full height and roared in mockery at the sky, at those Old Ones whose power had once imprisoned it deep in the living earth. The deers blood and flesh was sweet, but it knew that which was sweeter. Deep inside the monster she had become, Quinn Louise Morgendorffer, age eighteen, screamed in horror and revulsion at what she had just done.

And what she knew she was going to do.

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Tricia cowered inside the nightmare landscape deep inside her mind. A dark forest, all grays and blacks. The plants were all dead and dry, the ground under her feet was powdery. Bird's perched on the branches above her, but they were dead too, their eyes shrunken down to tiny hard knots, their withered feet clasped on the dead wood. Small animals peered out at her from holes and from under rocks, their fur shrunken down to their bones. The very air tasted dead. It was so dry and metallic.

There wasn't any sun or moon in the sky, the light just seemed to come from nowhere. Tricia knew something was looking for her, something very bad. She stumbled through the dry brush, the twigs breaking off as she stumbled through it, her bare feet rasing small clouds of dust. As she ran, her nightgown kept catching on the branches, almost as it they were snatching at her, trying to drag her down.

Slowly, an irregular loud hissing sounded around her, almost like breathing, getting slowly louder and louder. It filled the dead woods, making it hard for Tricia to think. The air changed, but not for the better. It stank, of dead and rotting things, of fresh blood. Tricia ran faster, frantic to get away from whatever was making that horrible noise, that bad smell. She finally stumbled into a clearing, and came to a halt, sinking to her knees, her bare feet burning, like the dry dust had cracked them open. She moaned quietly, rocking back and forth in pain, until she heard a quiet whisper.

"Help . . . me."

Tricia looked up. A large tree was in front of her, filling the center of the clearing. It was as dead as the rest of the forest. Withered things hung from each of the massive branches, ropes of dried hide holding them by the neck, as they swing, in a grisly unconscious parody of a Christmas tree.

Tricia saw small things, like rabbits, hung next to larger, manlike things, that must have been bears. Her mind slowly recognized the majority of the dangling things on the tree were people. Most of these had long black hair still attached to their cracked skin, dressed in leather clothing, like the books they had looked into that one time they had found that arrowhead. A few were dressed in tattered cloth, with heavy leather boots. Their eyes were shrunken like that of the animals in the forest, the hard jewels glinting at her.

A flash of color attracted her. One of the dangling corpses was wearing bright red casuals, with stained, but still stylish white slacks. Long brown hair flowed down just past its shoulders, though it was streaked with white. Its hands bleed, the bright blood dripping onto the leaves under the tree. Tricia could see the white bone showing through the fingertips. The crotch of its slacks was also stained with blood, and it ran down her thighs as well.

"Help . . . us, please . . . "

The hoarse whisper came again, begging. Tricia did not want to see the face of the hanging thing. She never wanted to see it, ever. But the rope creaked as the dangling body turned, ever so slowly. Tricia covered her face with her hands, this must be a nightmare, it had to be a nightmare!

"Tricia, you have to look."

"No, no, I don't."

"It's coming for you, Tricia, you can't escape it, any more than we could. Fire and ice, and endless hunger. Quinn is gone, now, and I'm alone now, always alone."

"You, you're not Quinn?"

"No, she's coming for you, but she's left me here, alone forever. It told me, it told me, that Death would see with my eyes, and speak with my lips. I wasn't a very nice person, you know. She asked me, if I dared bargain with the forgotten dead. I gave her my soul, they always want your soul, did you know that?"

"Who, who are you?"

"Didn't you like, hear me, Tricia? I'm Death, now, only Death. I'm going to crack open the world. I'm going to kill everybody, and nobody will laugh at me anymore, because I won't be here. I'm like, the door, y'know? I'm the door to Hell, only it's not what people think. It's all frozen, dead and frozen. Stacy is dead and buried, like, but I can still hear her scream. Tiffany's just dead, she'll kill you, but not you, little Tricia Gup-ty, not you. You're for Quinn, beautiful Quinn, lovely Quinn. Quinn will take you, and keep you, forever and ever."

After a long moment, the feeble voice added regretfully, "you'll just wish you were dead."

"You're Sandi! Sandi Griffin!"

The dangling body had completed its revolution. Tears of blood ran down the frozen face. Sandi's body was ripped open from chest to crotch, with her bloody organs showing, still frozen in place.

"I'm sorry you have to see me like this, Tricia. I don't think I ever took care of you, but Quinn always said you and your brother were the nicest kids she ever took care of."

"What happened to you!" Tricia screamed.

"I gave myself away, Tricia. My mother and brothers hated me, despised me. I slept with the dead, and I gave the only thing I really had away. I lost my friends, I lost my mom, my brothers liked to hurt me all the time."

"Why didn't you tell somebody!"

"Who cared? I was the witch, the big bad witch. Your brother called me that, you know. Quinn was better than I was, Stacy was better than I was, nobody liked me!"

Her voice rose in a wail.

"She promised me my mother would love me! She promised me!"

"Who promised you?"

"The Snow Lady, Stacy's Snow Lady, she brought the snow, the ghosts, they're all so hungry, so cold, they need our warmth. Poor Quinn, the Snow Lady killed her dad, and her mom. I really liked her mom, Helen was such a nice person, and I always wished . . . "

Sandi's voice trailed off.

"Go home, Tricia, go home. You don't belong here. This place is dead, like me and Stacy, like Tiffany. Poor, poor Quinn, she won't ever die, she can't die, no matter what."

"I, I don't understand, what do you mean, Quinn can't die, doesn't everybody die?"

A ghastly smile cracked the skin on Sandi's face.

"But Quinn's almost a god, Tricia, almost a . . . god. She's hunger and rage. She's a living spirit of Death. The gods punished her people a long time ago. They buried them alive."

"Isn't, isn't there only one god?"

"You're pretty smart for such a little girl, Tricia. Quinn said that Daria was smart, too, when they were kids. Poor Daria. I can still hear her screams. She's out there, now, where I was, floating alone, everybody is screaming and shouting all around you, and you can never touch anybody. Never again. Jane's trying to find her, she's such a great friend. I never had a friend like that, not even Quinn."

"Please, I just want to go home! I don't want to be here!"

The other bodies around Sandi start rustling, moving slightly. A faint whispering slowly grew louder and louder. Small whirlwinds stirred the ashy ground around Tricia, the ground trembled, stopped, then trembled again.

"They know you're here, talking to me, and they don't like it! Go home, Tricia! Save yourself!"

"Who's coming! Who's coming!"

"The Terrible People! They hunted us like we were animals! The Giants, the Titans! Some of them were good, but the others hated us! That's why there's all those stories about man eating giants!"

"How, how do you know all this?"

The ghastly smile returned to Sandi's face.

"You mean, when I wasn't really that smart? I'm dead, now, Tricia, I'm dead. We know things, we can find things out, even when we're like this. But I'm special, y'know, special."

"Special?"

"Body, mind, and soul, Tricia, body, mind, and soul. That's me, that's Sandi Griffin, ex-President of the Fashion Club! The Kami have my body, the Snow Lady has my soul, and the Great Beast has my mind! I can still feel it all, and it hurts so bad!"

Sandi's sentence ended in a scream, and she fell silent.

"Isn't, isn't there any way I can help you?"

"Please, please leave, Tricia, please go away. Its not only the giants that have a taste for kids. The dead hunger, too. I can smell you, almost taste you, your life, it wouldn't be enough, it would never be enough, but it would keep me warm for just a little while. Run away, Tricia, go home to your brother, your parents, they're the only ones you'll ever have."

Without looking behind her, Tricia stood up and started backing away from the tree, not taking her eyes off Sandi's hanging body. A final, faint, whisper her followed her as she turned and ran away.

"Just, when you do see Quinn, would you tell her, that she was my best friend, that Tiffany, Stacy and her were the only things that helped me hold together? And, that I loved them, all?"

Dimly, worlds away, Tricia heard the sound of a man screaming in such horrible fear and pain, that she didn't recognize the voice at first. Then she screamed herself, as the earth ruptured

directly in front of her. A stench filled the air, as a gigantic hand forced itself from the ashy soil, reaching for her, but it was all rotting, with huge pieces of flesh oozing off of it. It groped blindly for her, Tricia screamed and screamed, and felt herself being slapped violently. Her world twisted, and she fell and fell.

"Tricia, wake up!"

Tricia screamed in fear, staring at her mothers frantic face, her cheek stinging. Her brother stood at the door. The sound of breaking wood ripped through the air. The whole house shook. And her fathers screaming abruptly stopped.


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter Thirty Four**

"Andrea?"

"Kevin?"

"Wow, am I glad to see you! I kept trying to call either Jane, Daria, or you, but I couldn't get through!"

" I couldn't either," Andrea said, frowning. "I'm here at the hospital because our heat kept going off, not that it was keeping those apartments too warm, anyway. My mom's a nurse, and she was on duty. Why are you here?"

"Dad sprained his back trying to shovel some of the snow away from our big living room window. He was afraid it was going to crack from the weight. Mom and I got him inside, and I covered the window with a big piece of plywood, and then I drove both of them here. I can't believe this snow. It just won't stop!"

"Kevin, I know this is going to sound, well, weird, but do you feel anything about this storm?"

"Well, yeah," Kevin said very reluctantly. "If you just stand still, you can see things out of the corners of your eyes, almost like people. It creeps me out, because they always look so, you know, hungry. Man, do you think this is what you were talking about? The thing with Sandi?"

"Maybe, but I don't know. It's not like I'm some sort of practicing witch. I just hang out with people who are into that kind of stuff! But I do know something is really wrong."

Kevin wavered for a minute, then set his jaw, decisively.

"Let me tell my folks that I'm going to check out Jane and Daria, and we can go see them. Maybe you can figure something out. I'm not really that smart, but at least I can help you do something!"

"You, you really care about Jane, don't you?"

"Yeah, Jane is funny, and she's really sharp about a lot of things. She's not my babe or anything, but I, I think she's all right."

Minutes later, they were in Kevin's Jeep as it slowly crawled along the snow packed streets. Kevin hunched over the steering wheel, squinting through the windshield. The wipers and defroster were fighting a losing battle to keep the windshield clear of the snow being whipped around by the howling wind. The limited visibility and deep snow had already caused Kevin to have several small accidents, as the Jeep would make contact with a car so deeply buried that they didn't even know it was there until the fenders scraped.

Next to him, Andrea huddled in her thick clothing, with the addition of a thick blanket Kevin had dug out of the back of the Jeep. It was stained and smelled musty, but she was grateful for the additional warmth. Even though they weren't going all that fast, Kevin had insisted on both of them wearing their seatbelts. They both were shivering from the wind and snow that blew in every crack and crevice in the jeeps frame. Like Kevin, she kept her eyes forward. She had found that looking out the sides you were too likely to meet the gaze of something that disappeared when you looked directly at it.

Andrea shuddered, but not from the cold this time. Though she had dabbled in the Wiccan religion, she was by no means an expert in it. Magic wasn't anything like people saw on _Charmed _or _Sabrina_. She did know enough to realize that a seance was a very scary business. If anything did answer, it wouldn't just knock on wood, or move the pointer around on an Ouija board. Especially with all this strangeness in the air.

The closer they got to Daria's house, the colder it got, though the wind let up a bit. The snow slowly became crystals of ice, which crunched under the jeeps tires. Kevin constantly had to scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield to see. The jeep suddenly crawled out of the storm, and Kevin stopped, as he and Andrea stared straight ahead. The sky and ground ahead were clear, though the storm still raged all around them. The blazing colors of the Aurora Borealis lit the night sky, while the stars, not twinkling, shone steadily down on the scene.

The Morgendorffer house glistened in the light, its red brick exterior covered with thick frost. The second story windows over the garage glowed with a light quite different from that of the stars and snow. That light was a deep blue, filled with shifting shadows that played across the frosted glass. Oddly, it reminded Andrea of the ocean, and she could almost hear the roar of waves on a beach. Then she gasped, as, for a brief second, a massive figure blocked the light, and she saw a fierce male face, with thick black beard and wild hair. Its eyes glowed also with the oceans shifting gleam, and it bore a red sword. The figure stared directly at her, and she felt the raw masculine power thrust roughly at her, warning her away. She jerked back in her seat, and when she dared look back up again, it was gone.

Andrea was so shaken by the strange being, which she didn't hear Kevin's increasingly frantic whispering at first. She shook off his hand when he touched her.

"Kevin, leave me alone! What do you want!"

"Andrea, we're surrounded."

Andrea raised her eyes slowly. The air around the jeep thronged with pale figures, their ragged clothing fluttering in the wind. Their luminous eyes glowed with an intense weariness, and an awful, unending hunger. Twisting around in the seat, Andrea saw they were behind them, too.

"Andrea?"

"Yes, Kevin?"

"Um, what do we do now?"

The glowing figures closed in on the jeep.

"I ... think we're going to die."

"Oh, MAN!"

"Yeah."

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Stacy stared upward. Watching was all she could do anymore. Quinn's hideously transformed form had left the area. Sandi's mindless body writhed and moaned in its torment, the swirling blackness inside of her womb congealing, forming itself into a massive, deformed shape. Tiffany's gnawed bones littered the cabin, and her skull placed mocking on Sandi's swollen breasts. The black hair framed the empty gaze of her eye sockets. She tried to reach out to her, comfort her, but nothing answered her.

Stacy screamed again, the darkness growing inside of her, her own bones black, if only she could have seen it. She lashed out impotently at the soil of her grave with her only weapon, her mind. She fell back into herself again, exhausted.

_How can I be tired when I'm not doing anything? All I'm doing is looking at things! A lot of good that's doing anybody! I know I replaced the Snow Lady in her grave! .But she could still get out at times! Why can't I? What is I doing wrong? _

Stacy laid there in defeat, staring around her _at_ the imprisoning soil, not _through _it, as she had before. Slowly, so slowly, she started to see things. As she sharpened her senses, she saw minute things moving, living, crawling through the soil, worms, insets, smaller creatures yet, all gleaming dimly with life. Dimly, she remembered half listened to science classes, and words like _biosphere._

Stacy stared, utterly entranced despite the horror of her position. The tiniest things were alive, being born, living, dying, and reproducing at an enormous rate. Stacy slowly understood. The very world was alive! All around her, the air, earth and water all glowed with life, pulsing with it, the heart of the world itself beating far beneath her.

_Everything is alive! It's not just empty air, dirt and rocks! Everything is filled with life, all around me!_

Stacy shuddered, drew back inside of herself.

_But I'm not, am I? I'm not alive anymore! I gave it away, to help my friends. I asked for a favor from the one who had trapped us! I was so stupid! But I felt so special, that the Snow Lady had chosen ME! Now look at us! We're all worse than dead! I'm just a ghost that can't haunt a house! I'm a, a . . . !_

Stacy's mind shocked itself, ground to a halt.

_I... I am a vampire. How, I don't drink blood!_

A vision came to Stacy then, of the Yuki-onna bending over a man, her own breath a frosty cloud, stealing his life.

_I don't have to drink blood! I can steal their life out of their breath! I can freeze somebody from the inside out! I can be powerful! All I have to do is kill somebody!_

A whisper came to her ears.

_Who, Stacy Rowe? Who will you kill for this power, trapped as you are deep in the living Earth? Your friend, Sandi? You cannot, for she belongs to me! Your friend Tiffany is already dead, and Quinn belongs to one even I dare not lightly challenge, in this foreign land._ _Your own life is already forfeit, bartered to the Cold One_. _So, who will you kill?_

Stacy's leaping thoughts slammed to a halt.

_Kill, I never thought I'd have to kill anybody! _

_No? Do you not live off death, yourself? Do you not eat the flesh of animals? The very plants you eat were once alive. They grew, had their own young, then died, by the hands of your own race!_

_That's, that's different!_

_Is it? Do you not think that a field of plants echoes with screams as they are harvested? You could hear them, if you only wanted to._

_No! Why are you saying this? Who are you? Why are you torturing us like this!_

_This did not have to be. Susa-no-o's lust betrayed him, long ago. He forced one whose beauty attracted him. The young lord who took a bride his brother and people despised didn't have to do that. The young suitor who removed the Yuki-onna to this land didn't have to do that. He should never have brought her here, to this place, ripe with old death, but he did. Your friend shouldn't have collapsed on that mans grave, in such despair that she summoned the sleeping dead!_ _Didn't she know that such deep aching feelings stir up both the living and the dead, spirit and flesh!_

_How could she have known that! She's just a girl! Like me! Like I was! How could we have known this!_

_Just a GIRL! Women command life itself! Who are **you** to deny that!_

Stacy reeled, but struck back, her fear and frustration lending her strength.

_I'm **just** a girl! A **dead **girl! I'm not **alive** anymore! I'll never have children, now! My parents will die, not knowing whatever happened to me! _

_You are dead, yes, but not helpless. You are spirit, now, a Kami, like myself. You dwell in two worlds, but move through them differently than before._ _You share **her** curse, freely taken, though taken in ignorance._

Stacy's own words came back to her.

_Everything is alive! It's not just empty air, dirt and rocks! **Everything **is filled with life, all around me!_

She spoke timidly.

_But, if the world is alive, doesn't it hurt when it gets, um, killed, even a little bit?_

_Does the mother hurt during the birth of her child?_

_But this isn't childbirth!_

_Isn't it?_

The voice started to fade away.

_Wait, come back! Don't leave me alone here!_

All she heard was the trailing whisper.

_Isn't it?_

_Who, Stacy Rowe? Who will you kill for this power, trapped as you are deep in the living Earth?_

The unknown others words echoed in her mind.

_The Living Earth._

_Kill._

_Me? Kill? The Earth?_

Stacy focused on the life teaming in the soil around her, at the spores and microbes, the seeds and deep thrusting tree roots. It all glowed with life. Life that she could just reach out and take.

Like Quinn and Sandi had taken Tiffany's life.

_I've got to do something! I can't just rot here, if spirits rot! People are already going crazy in Lawndale. When Quinn gets there, and starts hunting those kids, there is going to be pure hell! Her spirit, or the windigo's spirit, will infect everybody!_ _If I just take a little bit, it won't hurt that much, will it?_

The other's words echoed in her mind.

_Does the mother hurt during the birth of her child?_

_Yes, yes she does. But everybody is always so glad during the birth. But the mother is kicking and screaming, and she has contractions and everything else._

Stacy sighed, looking around her.

_I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I have to do this._

Stacy stared at the soil in front of her eyes, at the tiny plants and animals living in it. Trembling she fought to open her lips just the smallest crack. It was like trying to move a mountain by blinking. After what seemed like forever, just a wisp of her breath escaped in a frigid cloud. The dirt froze, then crumbled into powder.

Power roared into her motionless form. Stacy gasped and then screamed!

Her still flesh trembled. Her dead white skin thrashed inside its form fitting prison. More soil crumbled around her, not much, but enough to move, just ever so slightly. She was still so desperately weak, though. She gazed widely all around her, staring for something to help her. Even with the power she could take from the soil, she was still trapped.

Then her eyes again rested on the rotting bones in the caves under the cabin. Grimly, she started forcing her way through the now dead soil toward the caves, a possible way out of her deep prison. To escape, by killing the mother of all life, even if ever so slightly. And by crawling out through the rotting remains of the long dead. Stacy's eyes glowed with a dark light as she struggled forward.

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Roger Morrison cautiously approached the pounding on his door, a claw hammer held in his trembling hand. The brown haired, middle-aged male nurse had been unable to get to the Cedars of Lawndale hospital for days. He was almost out of food. Banging on his neighbors doors had only resulted in screamed threats, or an ominous silence. He peeked out the peephole, but saw nothing, until he looked at an extreme angle, and saw somebody lying on the snow in front of his door.

He hesitated a single moment, then opened his door, and dragged the person inside. His practiced eyes saw a woman suffering from hypothermia, shivering convulsively. She had bad frostbite on her face and hands. Her body was shrunken as if by long starvation, her hands almost claws, her thick brown hair streaked with white. Oddly, her belly seemed to bulge, as if she had eaten some unknown meal after a long starvation.

Roger didn't hesitate, shutting the door and locking it, and putting the hammer down on the end table, he picked up the woman's shivering body and put it on the couch. The front of her coat was soaked with dark stains, and long experience in the ER told Roger it was dried blood. She muttered indistinctly, and he saw her teeth were stained red. Were her gums bleeding, or . . . ?

Her muttering became louder, and even used to smells as he had become, he gagged at the smell of rotting meat coming from her mouth.

"Sandi, . . . promised . . . gift, eat, learn, . . . need gift to learn, . . . mother, my little girl, I hurt her so bad, she's just like me, my little baby, I sent her to hell, my grandchild, I need gift, he promised me gift, . . . Tom, Sam, Chris, not enough, not right, need more to learn, to live, I need more, the right gift, promised . . . "

He shook his head in dawning horror, and turned to try the so far useless phone again. The howling wind outside masked Linda's rising to her feet, the fright mask her withered, bloodstained face had becoming twisting horrifically, as she quietly picked up the hammer and crept after him. Only a glimpse of her face in a wall mirror warned him, but too late, as he felt the impact of a crushing blow on the back of his head, his body limply collapsing to the carpet of his living room. He struggled vainly to scream, to move, to do something, anything!

His eyes fluttered open, seeing the woman he had tried to help kneeling above him. Her empty and vacant gaze shifted, became vaguely troubled for a second as she stared into his eyes. A gleam of intelligence came back into her face.

"I am sorry about this, but he did promise me!"

The hammer rose and fell again, with a hollow thud, and the sound of breaking bone. Then, the only sound in the apartment was the snarling of a starving animal.

As it fed.


	35. Chapter 35

Jane only let out a choked gasp as the god's blade tore through her back. The taste of the bloody froth from Daria's mouth, cold as it was, tasted oddly sweet on her tongue. She felt as if a lightning bolt had ripped through her thrashing body before it also tore through Daria. She screamed in silent pain, as if she had been torn right out of her skin. Her spirit slammed into Daria's dying mind, bits and piece's of both Daria and Helen's lives flashing before her like a cloud.

A miserable Daria was enjoying Tom Sloan's company, even while she felt like she was dying inside, crying alone at night from missing Jane, not knowing if their friendship would ever heal. Helen screamed as Daria was being born, a sweating Jake holding her hand tightly. Daria squalled indignantly as the doctor swatted her bottom, her small pink hands clenched tightly, her brown eyes squinting at this new, unfriendly world. She was swiftly cleaned and handed to her sobbing mother, where she contentedly began to nurse, still staring at the world around her in wide eyed wonder. Daria and Quinn sat in the back seat of a car, Daria muttering "brat!" while Quinn screamed back "brain!" Jane saw the jealousy between sisters beginning, saw Daria's hope for a friend to share her thought's with fade, as Quinn became the "cute little girl, " all pink and laces, with female relatives cooing over her.

Daria became ever more isolated, living through her books. She made a few friends in Highland, always being invited to slumber parties because of her adult library card. She would read some of the racier classic's to the other girls, before she slowly realized that this just was being used, and she stopped. Daria participated in school, becoming a fashion editor. She was the brightest student, winning the Science Fair every year. But Jane felt the quiet pain growing in Daria's heart the whole time, the isolation, not understanding why people didn't like her, why they resented her intelligence, called her names. The resentment as baby Quinn was always surrounded by friends and admirer's.

Then, the sheer intensity as this person, Jane Lane, outcast painter, and neglected daughter, actually spoke to her in Esteem class. Jane cried as she saw how Daria thought of her, idolized her, so afraid of doing something that might lose her this new friend.

Jane abruptly shocked back to consciousness, if not reality. She bolted upright from where she had been laying face down, unable to breathe, spitting and sputtering. Her hands searched through the soft ash, found solid ground, and pushed her upright. She staggered to her feet, and wiping the dry ash out of her face and hair, stared around her.

She was standing in the middle of a thick forest, giant trees and dense brush. But it was all dried out, dead. The ground was covered with a thick layer of ash. The air itself was dry, smelled somehow metallic. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, lighting things completely but dimly. The silence was complete. Jane couldn't even hear herself breathe. Then she discovered why.

She wasn't breathing.

She stared at her hand. Her flesh was a rather dingy gray, with purple tones. Her skin felt cold, clammy. She was suddenly glad she couldn't see her face. Her body matched the land around her, dead, in a dead land. If she took too long, could she ever go back? She remembered Su-sa-no-o had promised that Daria could be saved.

He hadn't said anything about Jane's return.

Jane stared around her wildly. She had just been swept along, out of her feeling for Daria. What kind of feeling? Friendship? Yes. Daria was her one, true, only real, friend.

Or was it love?

Jane sat stunned. Love?

Did she love Daria?

The cynical teenager she had spent every moment with that she could since she had met her?

Did she love Daria Morgendorffer?

And did Daria love her?

Was it possible?

Sure, she thought Daria was attractive enough under her decidedly drab clothing. She had seen Daria in the showers after Physical Education, and no, that wasn't it. It was something else.

Daria completed her. She and Daria had quarreled several times, noticeably over the Tom Sloan encounter, and they had both been miserable. Daria was her friend, close and personal. She did love the stubborn, cynical but still fragile, young woman she had known. She hadn't thrown away her life for Daria.

She had given it.

For the first time since this whole crazy affair had begun, a feeling of peace settled over Jane. She would save Daria, no matter what.

Because she did love her.

Jane pushed herself upright, feeling a surge of confidence in what she was doing. She stared at the nightmare landscape around her, feeling the warmth inside her build up like a steadily increasing flame. Something glinted at her, like a jewel, from the branches of a low tree, and curious, she carefully pushed aside the dry leaves to see what it was. It was a small squirrel glaring at her, but it was long dead. Its yellow eyes hadn't rotted, but instead shrunken into tiny bits, almost gem-like. Its flesh had shrunken to tightly coat its bones, and its hair was matted, thick with the powder ash. Uneasily looking around her, Jane now saw other small animals, all of them staring at her, even in their death with an almost insane hatred of her.

Jane shuddered, but carefully moved through the thick brush, and discovered something else. The plants around her were dead, but they weren't plants at all. When she accidently broke off a small twig, the "dead" bush trembled, and a woman's scream shattered Jane's newfound confidence. She stared in horror at the plant, and noticed something else. Where she had damaged it, was a bright, red, drop of blood. She held up the twig she still held. It was bleeding too. The entire forest seemed to be watching her now, with a slowly building anger. She very carefully put the twig down, and careful not to brush against any more of the plants surrounding her, edged away from the still trembling bush.

Very quietly, she thought to herself, "And who were you before you died?"

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Lester Gupty carefully locked the door of the master bedroom behind him, the white faces of his wife and children filling the normally placid middle-aged man with fear. The strange things happening to both his neighbors and Tricia were shaking him to the core. Why was his daughter suddenly so afraid of poor Quinn? The poor girl was probably dead with her friends, frozen in the drifting snows. Lester had never believed in ghosts, but staring out the window in his kitchen door, he was starting to change his mind. The snow blew into strange columns, almost, but not quite, forming human figures, that would collapse.

He looked at the small hammer he had been carrying around and sighed. The thing was poor enough as a tool, and wasn't worth much as a weapon, either. His neighbors had rifles, pistols. Would they attack his home for food and heat? Would they murder him, and then his family, just to survive? Horror stories he had been told by his grandparents back in Poland, of the horror of the Nazi occupation, reminded him of just how low human beings could sink.

A sudden chill swept over him, bringing to mind a saying his grandfather had often said.

"I'm mortally cold, mother. I feel that someone is walking on my grave."

A cold grave. A frozen grave. Why was this happening? Was it sheer chance, a combination of circumstances? A blind blending of weather patterns? This was New England, they always had heavy snow in the winter. People got lost and died, even nice young women like that Quinn. Lester frowned. Normally, such a disappearance called into action hundreds of people, searching for those lost. Even with this massive snowstorm, something more should have been done. Where was the National Guard, the State Police? From what he knew of Quinn's parents, they were the type to move Heaven and Earth for their children! Where were they? Why were they silent?

Suddenly, Lester stiffened, as an overwhelming presence fell across him. Darkness poured itself across him, as he stood shivering in his kitchen. He just knew something was standing just outside the flimsy wooden door and plate glass, something that was very old, and very evil. Deep contempt, an almost insane mockery of the entire human race swept over him. He trembled, wanting to run down the hall, hide himself with Lauren, with Tricia and Tad, to hide in the closet, or under the bed, he would be safe then, even if the others died.

No! Lester slammed his hand down on the counter in anger. He would not hide, would not sacrifice his family. He hefted the hammer, almost a toy and shaking, walked slowly over to the back door, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl of rage and fear. With a grunt mixed of both hate and fear, he pulled the curtain aside, staring out the frost-covered window into the blowing snow.

At first, he saw nothing, other than the snow, swirling across his back yard, the drifts piled high. Then slowly, a massive shape slowly seemed to form before him, a distorted, angular thing, that shifted even as he stared at it. It crouched down, staring at him, with enormous, bulging eyes. Blue eyes. Blue eyes, framed by stray tufts of, if it had been clean, Lester would have recognized instantly as strawberry blonde hair.

Quinn Morgendorffer's hair.

As it was, Lester only stared deeply into the monsters eyes, like a child staring into a snow globe, at the writhing, tormented figure deep inside the massive orbs. The figure steadily grew clearer and clearer, trapping Lester in fascination, to see what it was. It was naked, showing every bone, every rib, the skin stretched tightly across the skull like face. It was every picture of starvation Lester had every imagined, concentration camp corpses, children from Third World countries staggering in ruined war-torn streets.

Lester saw raging storms, of rain and snow, Native American children, settlers huddled in fragile houses of bark, hide, and timber, starving as wolves howled outside their flimsy shelters. The sheer fragility of life caused him to gasp. The creature opened its massive jaws, almost in a grin, it's rows of uneven teeth a dull yellow, old blood crusted on its thin lips.

He stared at the thing, frozen, unable to move a muscle. He heard a dim whispering, like a voice from the stars, so far away, a familiar voice he had never thought he would ever hear for the rest of his life. The voice of an incredibly beautiful young woman, still childish in many ways.

"Mr. Gupty, I'm so sorry, I'm so very sorry, please, forgive me."

The quiet, pitiful voice was abruptly blasted away as the creature shot one long ungainly arm forward. The huge hand blasted though the back door like a wrecking ball. The jagged claws on it speared deep into Lester's stomach, the force slamming him into the back wall of the kitchen, snapping his spine. Lester screamed loudly, before he choked on his blood, staring in disbelief at what the creature had done in only a few seconds, his shock preserving him for a precious few seconds of life. The creature pressed its face close to Lester's, it's massive rough tongue flicking out to taste the blood pouring out of his gaping mouth.

In its huge eyes, Lester only saw his own death. He saw Lauren and Tad torn apart into bloody ribbons. He saw a dirty, foul little cabin where a mindless animal that once had been human writhed in the grip of an unspeakable labor. He saw a black haired young woman without a face howling in madness across the snows, while another one crawled through the earth, her own insane hunger close to a match for the thing killing him. Then, the massive claws flexed, ripping him apart, and Lester Gupty knew nothing at all.


	36. Chapter 36

The cloud of phantoms all stood only inches away from the red paint of Jeep. Kevin's hands were locked on the steering wheel, his eyes darting frantically around. Andrea still huddled in the seat, next to him. Her mind frantically sifted through the bits and pieces of psychic lore she knew. She was bitterly aware that a lot of what she knew had likely been picked up out of TV shows and movies. She had hung out with friends of the Wiccan faith, but hadn't really joined the local coven. Andrea knew how to clear her mind and meditate. She had experimented with astral projection, and had some interesting results. But she knew if she left her body now, it would be a one way trip, with her likely joining the ghosts trapping them. Besides, what about Kevin? Little as she liked him, in this place, he was her responsibility. She also admired his dedication to Jane, far removed from his former Big Man on Campus mentality.

Kevin looked at Andrea uncertainly. Being held back at school, not being allowed to play football, and facing the contempt of the students he had always thought looked up to him, had shaken his former superiority complex to pieces. He had never been mean, just smug. But Jane, whom he had ignored, had become his friend. Jane was cool, and really smart. But even she respected Daria, and was risking her life for her. Andrea was a lot different then he had thought too. She was smart, and tough. Brittany had always been bossy, and sort of smart. Sort of like his own mother. In a rare flash of insight, Kevin suddenly knew that was why she hadn't liked him dating Brittany, because she had been reminded of her own marriage with his dad.

A weird idea came to Andrea. She had attended one ceremony, which had really impressed her. It was the only one she had helped with, and she did remember most of it. It was insanely desperate, but she felt the ghosts mere presence draining her body heat, and she had to do something. She whispered,

"Kevin?"

"What?"

"Give me your hand!"

The ghosts momentarily forgotten, he stared at her.

"Damn it, Kevin, take off your glove, and give me your hand! NOW!"

"Uh, Andrea? I know we're going to get killed, but do you really think we should be making out, now?"

The look of fury on Andrea's face at his remark shut him up, and he meekly removed his gloves. Andrea tore off her own, and grabbed Kevin's right hand, slashing the nail on her index finger across his palm. He yelped in pain, but said nothing as Andrea then slashed her left palm open. She grabbed Kevin's own bloody hand, the skin feeling clammy, the hot blood mixing, more sticky than wet. As they stared at each other, the icy plumes of their breath mingled, twisting together in the sub-freezing air. Fear left Kevin's face, and strangely, he smiled. Andrea stared back in disbelief, then, focusing more intently then she ever had before, began to chant in a cracked, hoarse, voice.

"Blood of man,

blood of woman,

blood feeds the fire,

the fire of the soul.

Souls twine together,

equal yet apart,

Blood feeds the fire,

the fire of the heart!"

As the last word left her lips, Andrea felt a rush of heat running into her from Kevin's hand, almost like liquid. Holding the palm of her right hand outward, she saw the specters recoil slightly, their hungry eyes widen in baffled anger. The Jeep suddenly became surrounded by a pale flickering flame, barely visible. Andrea felt the heat rushing out of their bodies. She gasped weakly.

"Kevin, get us out of here! No, jerk, don't let go of my hand!"

Clumsily, Kevin put the jeep into reverse, grinding the gears loudly. The ghosts behind them reluctantly moved aside. Andrea could feel her heart slowing, sharp aches shooting through her bones, and she knew Kevin was feeling the same thing. Their breathing became labored, painful, even as the jeep left the eye of the storm, being battered again by the strong winds. Kevin shifted gears, moving forward in a circle away from the Morgendorffer house. Andrea was shaken, staring blindly out at the snow as it flew past them. Her fear screamed inside her skull. She saw faces in every swirl, felt grasping hands in every gust of wind.

Kevin's teeth had bitten deeply into his lip. His eyes were wide, his driving almost mechanical. He felt so cold. His bones hurt, aching like an old mans. He didn't care about anything. He felt like something was draining out of him. His eyes dully went to his hand, where it clasped Andrea's. She slumped down, almost unconscious. He knew that if he didn't do something soon, they would both die, out here in the storm, and that wasn't right. Jane needed him. His parents needed him. Andrea had saved his life. He wasn't sure how, but she had. She had cast a spell or something, and chased away the ghosts. The ghosts!

Kevin's hand felt like it had been welded to Andrea's. She hadn't stopped what she had done, and it was draining them, killing them both. She had to turn it off!

"Andrea, we're safe! Stop it now!"

Andrea's eyes weakly flickered toward him. She mumbled something, but he didn't understand her.

"Andrea, you've got to turn it off!"

She pulled away from him with little strength, but their hands were still clasped tightly together. Her eyes widened, and she struggled harder, but still couldn't free herself. She grew frantic, seeing them both dead, victims of her misuse of Wiccan ritual magic. She felt like she and Kevin had been chained together, and were falling into a deep sea, with water all around them. Then the last stray bit of memory clicked into place.

"Flames once united,

will now stand apart,

hearts tied together,

beat loudly in the dark."

"Love now will save us,

love is the key,

the two are now joined,

together, forever, are we."

With the last gasped word, their hands separated with a sudden audible pop. Kevin stopped the jeep, and they both just sat there, gasping in pain. The cold seared through the canvas sides of the Jeep, and Kevin fumbled behind him. After a moment, his numb hand located the rounded surface of his thermos bottle, and he pulled it forward, clumsily unscrewing the plastic cap. It was a lot harder to unscrew the smaller top, and he spilled as much as he got into the cup, but he finally did it.

Looking over at Andrea, he saw blood running down her face, from where she had bitten into her lip in terror. It took both hands to tilt her head back, and pour some of his mom's coffee into her mouth. For a long minute, nothing happened, and he dully wondered if it was too late. Then, she made a grimace of distaste, but swallowed part of the vile brew. She felt a slight renewal of her strength, and looked at Kevin. He had slumped against the steering wheel facing her, his eyes closed.

Spotting the thermos, she carefully poured him a cup, wrinkling her nose att. the strong aroma. It took all the strength she had left, but she finally tilted him back, and poured some of the thickest, blackest coffee she had ever seen or smelled into his mouth. He gasped and choked, but swallowed it, a tinge of color coming back into his face. They both finished off the rest of the thermos, before Andrea said,

"Kevin? Do you have a First Aid kit, or something we can use to bandage our hands?"

Shaking his head, Kevin reached under Andrea's seat, pulling out the small plastic case. Popping it open, he tore open a package of wet wipes, and surprisingly careful, gently wiped first Andrea's, and then his own hand clean of blood, then smeared antiseptic cream on them. He finished by placing cotton pads on their palms, then wrapping gauze around them, finishing by using surgical tape from the small roll in the case. Stiffly, they helped each other put their gloves back on.

Andrea noticed as her strength came back that Kevin's eyes kept glancing at her face.

"Kevin? What's wrong? What are you looking at?"

"Um, ah, it's just that, um, I don't understand it. Andrea, your hair!"

Andrea tilted the rear view mirror toward her face. The silvery hair sprinkled through the formerly black strands told their own story. Kevin reached over, and looked at himself in the mirror. He had the same silver hairs. Very quietly, he asked,

"Andrea, what happened to us? Was it the magic?"

"Yes, Kevin. Nothing is ever free. I had to protect us, but that was the only thing I could do, and I had to use our lives to do it. I used you, Kevin, without your consent, I saved our lives, but I had to steal yours to do it."

"You used yours, too."

'That won't matter, Kevin. I had to break some really important rules to do it. It was for a good reason, but I still broke the rules. I'm not a witch, but by using their magic, I became bound by their laws. I did something else I'm going to have to pay for, too."

"The blood thing?"

"Yes, the blood thing, and the thing with the vows. I had to bind us togther to make the protection work, and there was only one way to do it that I could think of. I tied us together, Kevin, spiritually and psychically. That's how I was able to use your spiritual energy to make the shield work."

"Um, you mean . . . !"

"Yes, Kevin, I know I'm going to pay for doing this, but by the spiritual laws which govern all Wicca who follow the path of light, we are married. For eternity."

"Oh, MAN!"

"Yeah, that's how I feel about it, too."

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Stacy wiggled forward through the thick soil. Even using her steadily increasing strength, it was hard work, only centimeters at a time, scraping away the powdery dust after her icy breath stole the life in it. She had a harder time with gravel and rocks, unable to affect them, and she had to squirm around them. She grimly focused her mind on escape, trying not to think of the small lives she was forced to steal for her strength.

Her vision wavered, phantoms stealing through her mind, until sometimes she wasn't sure where she was, or what she was doing. A legacy of the Yuki-Onna? Was it an accident, or had her corruptor

tried to leave her a message? A message of what? Hope? Despair?

The mountain reared itself in her thought's again. Fuji-Yama. Goddess of Fire. The white capped volcano towered above the plain. The inhuman beauty of the Snow Woman filled Stacy's thoughts. Who was she? What had made her what she was? Tiffany had tried to tell her, but had only given her fragments of the story before becoming completely insane. The other one, her human husband, had tried to tell her, too, before he was abruptly silenced by the Wendigo. Fire and Ice. Stacy's lack of interest in her schoolwork frustrated her now. Who could she ask?

She screamed in her mounting anger, less a maggot crawling through the earth. The darkness seething around the rotting bones she burrowed toward tempted her with the remnants of the lives once there. Fragments of the lives lost by their deaths screamed and shouted at her. Men and women fought and lost, lived and loved, hated, stole and died.

Even with their horrifying deaths, pieces of life still clung to the bones. Life Stacy knew could give her strength, help her reach the surface, stop the monster Quinn had become. Stop the monster being born inside Sandi's mindless body, whatever it was. Stacy was siphoning all the energy around her, both life and death. The soil crumbled faster and faster. If anybody had been there to see it, Stacy's body was glowing darkly, almost like blacklight. Shifting patterns of energy slowly grew around her, clothing and cloaking her like robes. But they weren't of the fluctuating light which the Snow Woman wore, the life stolen from dying men and women. The blackened bones ahead of Stacy slowly crumbled before she even reached them. Stacy Rowe, age eighteen, was wreathed in patterns of darkest night.

And granite boulders now crumbled at her merest touch.

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Sandi's punishment had been swift. The soil around the tree of death had erupted, vast geysers of dirt and stones flying high into the air. Sandi's body had spun helplessly, her arms and legs motionless, her ruptured body inert. But she was far from unfeeling. She felt her dry skin crack and burn, her frozen guts swelling in the cold air. She accepted it all, as what she deserved. She was in Hell, wasn't she? Bad people, selfish people, who hurt their friends like she had, deserved to be punished like she was being punished.

The rope around her neck choked even her dead flesh. Her eyes frozen open, she sometimes saw the other people on the tree. They were all dressed like actors from a Thanksgiving play, pilgrims and Indians, animals and birds, all hanging by the neck. Men, women, and children. Children like Tricia Gupty. Sandi raged at the fact that she had let the little girl leave, even as she clung to the fact that she had warned her away, helped her to escape this horrible place.

No matter how she tried, Sandi couldn't escape from her mind into madness. Something outside of her kept her focused on the events that had led to this horrible place. Something seemed to beat at her mind, something from far off, far away, a mighty thing, a ... bird?

A crack of thunder came to her hearing, very faint, very dim. The wind blew fitfully, the dried bodies banging into it and each other, their dead eyes meeting hers, eyes that were filled with accusation and despair. Sandi wanted to scream, to moan, but even that release was denied her motionless form. Thunder pealed, much closer this time. A storm? Good! Maybe a lightning bolt would blast her, destroy her, scatter her to little tiny bits, where she could never hurt anybody ever again!

Thunder roared again, directly overhead, now. Lightning bolts slammed into the ground on either side of the tree. Sandi felt the raw energy sizzle the very air, causing more torment toward her dead flesh. Then, a screech louder than anything she had ever heard in either her life or death shook the world, crashing into her body. Something flew overhead, something massive. A glance from one huge eye tore into Sandi's numb spirit, sent it flying around the confines of her own skull. Anger boiled deep inside her, her passiveness shaken by the elemental fury she had just seen.

Flashes of the other girls, her friends, tore into her mind. Quinn, Stacy, Tiffany. Jane, struggling to save Daria. Her mother, crouching above a man with a shattered skull, eating his ... NO!

Sandi swung on the tree powerless, helpless. She raged in fury.

_I gave you what you wanted, you cheated! You cheated me! Moms insane! She's a murderer! She'll never love me, she'll never love anybody again! Quinn, Stacy, Tiffany, my only friends are monsters! I'm hanging here while they suffer! Why, tell me why!_

Sandi's eyes rolled in their sockets, staring straight at the dead sky. Visions tore into her mind. The other bodies hanging with her vanished, except for one. He was a massive man, with long white hair and a beard that flowed halfway down his chest, fluttering in the wind. The tree changed, too. It became living once again, green and strong, towering into the sky. Sandi saw worlds thrust deeply into the boughs and branches, into the deep roots, worlds of both beauty and horror.

_Nine days I hung on the tree, a sacrifice, myself, to myself._

Sandi stared at the man hanging with her. He was as dead as she was, wasn't he? No, he wasn't real, he was from far in the past, a ghost even in this land of death and undeath. Wasn't he? Who was he, who had he been, long ago? Sacrifice? Why had he sacrificed to himself? Wasn't sacrificing something you did to earn something, to get something? What could you get from dying?

_Knowledge._

_Knowledge? Like, what kind of knowledge? Dumb old books? Were you crazy, old man? Why did you kill yourself? What did you think you were going to get from it?_

Sandi's screamed answer rattled around in her own head.

_You died on purpose, you old fool! Why? I deserved to die, but not the others! Quinn! Stacy! Maybe even Tiffany! People loved them! They were going to be something great! But not me! Never me! I just screwed everybody else up!_ _Mean nasty Sandi! The ice bitch!_ _The old witch!_

The dead air trembled with the fury of Sandi's anger. Sandi heard Daria, whimpering like an animal, trapped in the Abyss, curled up, forever alone, with the screams of others echoing in her own ears. Quinn's sister, who should be celebrating Christmas right now, with Quinn and her parents.

_Daria! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! We're all dead, all dying, and it's all my fault! Jane! Help her! Help her live!_

Quinn was dead, like she was, inside that monster. Sandi's words about finding out things came back to her! Why was she here, unlike the Yuki-Onna's other victims? Why was she hanging on this tree? Had the Snow Woman put her here for a reason? What was so special about this tree, this stupid damned tree?

The vision of the living tree cradling the universe came to her again, even as the ghostly specter of the old man hanging next to her stirred, opening his eyes. His left eye blazed, burning deep into Sandi's soul. But the right socket gaped emptily at her, filled only with darkness.

But deep in the Abyss, the formless void where lost souls drifted forever, a small shape slowly stopped it's crying, and whispered, "Sandi? **Jane!**"


	37. Chapter 37

The dead atmosphere, the sense of being watched by hovering presences, oppressed Jane as she moved carefully through the thick brush and dark, looming trees. Her feelings weren't helped any by the fact that when she looked behind herself, she saw the marks her feet made in the powdery ground were slowly filling in behind her, leaving no sign she had ever been there. Moans and whispers almost unheard, filled the air around her, though she never saw who or what made the sounds. An accidental glance at her hands sent her hurrying forward. The flesh there seemed even grayer, dingier, almost tattered, with a faint hint of purple corruption. If she had a sense of smell in this place, would she smell her own flesh rotting?

Jane shuddered, then set her lips together firmly. Daria in her arms, dying in Quinn's bedroom, next to the frozen bodies of Jake and Helen, focus on that. If she had a chance at all to save her friend, that's what she had to focus on. Daria didn't belong here. Nobody did. This was a vast graveyard, with people trapped as motionless plants, still being able to think and feel. What shook Jane the most was the sheer impersonal evil of the place. People were just here. There were no laughing devils to jab you with pitchforks, punish you for whatever sins you might have committed. You were just here, courtesy of a blind, uncaring, universe.

Jane shuddered, focusing on Daria, the way the little cynic made her feel when they were together, just hanging out, talking over pizza, or Daria laying in her bed, reading, while Jane painted, sarcastic statements flying back and forth. Slowly, the panic faded, though not the horror. Jane pushed on, the images of Daria settling down into one picture, Daria's "Mona Lisa" smile, that quiet smirk which meant Daria was happy, content.

Still, what was causing all this, what was the key to the things that were happening? Su-sa-no-o's presence came to mind. The blast of information from just seeing him had burned into Jane's thoughts. The Impetuous Male. A god of the sea. What did he have to do with the mysterious force connected with Quinn and her friends, the force which killed Helen and Jake, which apparently had caused Jane to draw that picture of the snow-covered _torii_, and the shadowy shape inside it?

"My sword, yes, to correct my sins, my mistakes!" What had he meant by that? What wrongs could a god(or spirit?) commit? Thanks to her parents New Age thinking, Jane had a passing knowledge of pagan religion, mostly Wicca oriented. Mother Earth, Gaia, people dancing "sky clad" around tree groves. She stopped and stared at the trees and shrubs around her, then shook her head and continued on. Japan and Lawndale. There was a "Good Time's" Chinese Restaurant where she and Daria had that disturbing linked hallucination about the Holidays taking human form, and wandering the streets. No Chinese gods had appeared, though. Not that she would have known them, anyway.

Jane suddenly noticed that her path seemed to become more and more sure, that her body moved without hesitation, threading easily through the brush and trees. A gift from Su-sa-no-o? Or had something noticed her, was reeling her in like a fish? Jane stopped for a moment, and discovered that she still had control over her own body, though she could feel a tugging at her spirit. Reluctantly, she started to follow the pull again, though moving more cautiously than she had been moving before, almost at a run. Far away, she thought she could hear the screeching of birds.

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Daria had forced her drifting body out of it's curled up fetal position, standing straight, her small fists clenched at her sides. The eternal winds of the Abyss caressed her bare skin, sometimes hot, sometimes chilled. Their ever present roar filled her head, making her want to scream or shout just to drown them out. The despairing cries of her fellow captives were slowly building up to their previous level after the abrupt silence that had filled the place after Sandi's scream of fury had echoed though the place like a thunderclap. It had shaken Daria out of her misery, and she knew that if she gave into it again, she wouldn't ever stop.

_I might be in a hypothermia induced coma, or an hallucination. I might even be dead. But I will not spend the rest of my life or death whimpering like I was. I have to focus, remember who I am, what's happening to me! This place isn't anything but a king sized sensory deprivation tank. I..., I died in Jane's arms, asking her,"Why?" She was trying to help me, rescue me. Mom and Dad were already dead. Are they here, too? Will I hear Dad ranting about his father for eternity, or Mom's business calls? No, in this place, that would be too easy, merciful. Floating here like this, terrified of hands reaching out for me in the darkness, but never again touching anybody at all. No hugs from Mom, Dad, or Quinn. No friendly pats on my arm from Jane. Nothing at all._

Daria bit deeply into her lip, welcoming the pain as a distraction.

_Sandi screamed that she was sorry. Sorry for what? Did she hurt Quinn and the others? Did they have a car wreck? In spite of everything Andrea told us, I still can't believe that Sandi Griffin would be desperate enough to commit, what do you call this? Oh, yeah. **Necromancy**. Sandi Griffin? Still, that business with her mom, and Sandi's image in the mirror were spooky to the extreme. And Jane. Why would she scream for Jane to help me? Unless she knew what was going on. But how would Jane know? Did she and Andrea find something out?_

Fire and Ice. Each one constantly destroying the other, with all existence huddled between the two extremes. The Snow Woman, the Yuki-onna, the "Snow Whore." A mocking temptress dancing naked over the snow. Images flickered through her mind, a legacy of the darkness she had been swallowed by. Daria struggled to see them. Then, far off, in the absolute darkness, there was a light. It was an uneven, flickering light, pale as the first star in the evening. The sounds around her cutoff with a suddenness that shook Daria, even in this place. Shivers shook her small frame.

Daria had just discovered something about her new existence.

Even the damned still feared Death.

Even as the pale illumination lit Daria's body, a corner of her mind noted that she still saw no sign of her fellow sufferers. The air chilled around her, immobilizing her in the rigid posture she forced her body into. Daria was unable to move so much as a finger, but was able to close her

eyes, unwilling to meet the gaze again of her beautiful, horrifying killer. A tinkling chime filled the air, and an odd image of delicate bells, formed of frost in some lonely forest glade filled her mind. Daria felt her flesh grow chill, cold, and the agonizing memory of her death in Quinn's room racked her small frame, forcing a choked gasp from her. Her sheer helplessness tormented her, floating naked in death, her superhuman murderer facing her, only inches away. She felt the inhuman gaze of those dark eyes focused on her. She would have sworn she could hear the rustle of her silken robes in the silence that now filled this place.

Whatever the Snow Woman had been before her current form, Daria had a flash that even then, she had been more than human. One of the images that had appeared in Daria's mind flared to focus. An incredibly beautiful child, playing by herself in a thick forest, dancing barefoot in the snow, more spirit than human, shunned by her playmates. But she had been human enough to feel the pain of the isolation, not understanding why. Tears had rolled down her perfect skin, spun away from her to lie sparkling in the deep snow. Then suddenly, she _was_ her. Daria looked around herself, startled. She was standing in the snow, surrounded by dark, twisted trees. A heavy bundle weighed down her weakened, shaking arms. The cold bit into her, through the heavy robes she wore. Through a slight gap in the thick trees, she saw a mountain, famous the world over.

Mount Fuji-Yama..

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Lester's scream cut off mercifully short. Not so the grunting, the sounds of flesh being gnawed off bone. Lauren's arms were locked around the silent Tricia. Tad stood next to the door, trembling, the suddenly flimsy baseball bat still at the ready. A wet, heavy thud echoed through the room, as something struck the door, and slid down to the floor with a heavy plopping sound. Lauren was breathing in short, sharp gasps. Tricia was limp in her mothers arms, her skin cool, damp, her wide eyes focused on the door. Lauren closed her mouth with a snap, and gently caressed her daughters hair. She cleared her throat, and spoke softly.

"Tad, honey, over here, please."

Tad backed toward his parents bed, not taking his eyes off the door. His eyes flickered toward his mother and sister for just a second. His breath whistled shrilly in and out of his throat, through his clenched teeth.

"Tad, I want you to take your sister, and when I open the door, go upstairs to the attic, alright?"

"Mom, no! We can't open that door!"

"Tad, you have to. You have to go, now, while, that, that thing is, is **_busy_**!"

His voice grew shrill and broke off, and she fought to regain her composure. Her eyes went to the bedroom walls, to their family pictures, to her wedding picture, of Lester standing there proud and dignified in his gray suit. He had always been there for her, always steady, always dependable, good for every need in her life.

Now, never again.

She looked down at Tricia, then up at Tad, now the man of the house. Her little boy.

"Tad, You take Tricia, you have to take good care of her. Now, when I open the bedroom door, you take her upstairs to the attic, and hide there."

"But, Mom, what about you?"

I'll be right behind you, okay" But you have to take Tricia for me, and hide in the attic. And whatever you do, don't come back down, until the police come. I , I just want you to know, that you and Tricia have been the best children, and your father and I love you both very much. Please, please always remember that."

"But, Mom! Dad's dead!"

I know that, honey, I know that. Just do what I've told you to do. You have to take care of Tricia, she's your responsibility now. I, I have to go call the police."

Tad had always been an intelligent boy. He stared at his mothers face, memorizing it, like he had never seen it before.

He somehow knew he would never see it again.

He quietly took his sisters hand, and followed his mother to the door. Lauren stopped just before she reached the door, listening carefully, and very slowly unlocked it. The faint click of the lock sounded like a gunshot. Lauren and Tad froze, then Lauren reached forward again and gently turned the knob. Something slid greasily on the outside of the door, and a spurt of blood flew under the door, soaking into the carpet.. Lauren bit her lip, but continued easing the door open, thankful for Lester's regular oiling of the door hinges, a fussy as it might have seemed before. She gasped when she opened the door wider, and Tad heard something fall to the carpet with a slight thud. The noises from the kitchen didn't stop, and Lauren roughly pulled her children across what lay on the carpet, but not before Tad glanced down. With a burst of strength, he helped lift Tricia up, not letting her see it. The gold ring on the remains of his fathers hand gleamed up at him.

His mother pushed him toward the stairs, and he hurried up them, supporting his sisters limp weight. Tricia mumbled incoherently, like she was dreaming. At the head of the stairs, he looked down and saw his mother standing resolutely at the bottom. She gave him a weak smile, and made a shooing motion. Tad turned the corner, hurrying to the pull down stairs to the attic. Lauren trembled, but she walked steadily down the hall to the shattered kitchen door, hanging crazily from the upper hinge.

"What am I doing? It killed my Lester! But maybe, if it takes me, it'll leave the kids alone."

She stood there for a long time, shivering in the wind coming in through the shattered back wall.

The smell of fresh wet blood hung thickly in the chill air. The gnawing sounds in the kitchen ended with a grunt. The only sounds Lauren heard was the snow hissing outside, as it blew across the drifts surrounding her home, their home Dimly, Lauren heard the hissing become words, words that she strained to understand..

_I am the Spirit of the lonely places, the spirit that devours man, woman, and child. Who are you, woman, to stand against those who were fathers to those you called gods? You are my prey, your flesh my food, as it was so long ago. As I took your husband, so shall I take you, and your children. The first of **my** children now hunt in your village, and soon, so soon, the Eldest comes again, and your people will be prey._

"Leave my children alone!"

As Lauren stood there, shaking, the falling snow in the kitchen condensed in a massive, ungainly, form. Her numb mind dimly recognized ribs falling to the floor. The creature turned to face her, and came into sharp relief. The bulging eyes, the thin lips and jagged teeth.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Gupty? Aren't you going to tell me how happy you are I'm alive?"

The familiar voice hammered into Lauren's brain. The missing girls, Tricia's nightmares.

"Quinn? No, NO!"

"Yes, Mrs. Gupty, I'm back in Lawndale! Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Quinn, what happened to you!"

"I survived, Mrs. Gupty, I survived, aren't you proud of me?"

"Why did you kill my husband?"

"Why not?"

"What?"

"He was in our way. So are you and Tad. But not Tricia. I want her, she'll keep me warm for a very long time, and I'm so cold. I'm so very cold. I've been so cold for such a very long time."

She smiled then, almost tenderly, and Lauren held her breath. Was Quinn winning her fight, inside the gruesome form? The massive paw's shot up, grabbing the woman roughly, and tore her in half, spraying her remains across the once pristine kitchen. The children hiding in the attic felt their hearts stop at the bestial howl that erupted from beneath them.

"**Wen-di-go!**

And Quinn's soul shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.


	38. Chapter 38

Kevin's jeep pulled up to the barely seen fence of the old cemetery, now only a long ridge in the snow. Smaller bumps in the field behind it suggested the location of tombstones. The roar of the wind was strangely muted here. Only a slight fall of snowflakes reminded them of the blizzard that had locked Lawndale in its grip for a month.

"Wow, Andrea, how are you going to find the right grave in all this snow?"

Kevin sounded exhausted, and only his mothers strong coffee was keeping him going. That, and a sense of duty. Jane was his buddy, and she was cool. He didn't quite understand the whole "soul bonding"thing. Granted, he now thought Andrea was sort of cool now, too, but wasn't she a witch? Well, after all this weird stuff was over, he would ask his folks about it. Well, maybe his mother, at least. Mothers always seemed to understand things better than dads, in Kevin's opinion.

Andrea didn't answer as she stared out at the gently falling snow. Doubt's had filled her mind, after their narrow escape from the ghosts at Daria's house. Sure, she liked Jane and Daria. But she knew she was way out of her league in all this. Bits and pieces of knowledge picked up over the years by a curious mind. That was being thrown against what? Ghosts? The memory of that eerie voice that had spoken with Sandi in this very graveyard still shook her, and she was glad it was so quiet now. Still like Kevin, a sense of responsibility nagged at her, telling her that she was the only one in a position to do something about this.

Now, how to find the grave under all this snow. A vague memory drifted into her head, and she frowned, then spoke up.

"Kevin, do you have a piece of string, and a small weight, a nut or something, that I could tie on the end?"

Kevin thought, then reached across Andrea, and popped open the glove box.. Reaching in, he fumbled around for a moment, then pulled out several shoelaces and his class ring..

"I, uh, chucked it in there when Brit broke up with me. I just didn't want to see it anymore."

Andrea just silently nodded, and choosing the thinnest shoelace, tied one end to the ring, and the other ring to her left hands stretched out forefinger. She made a fist with her other fingers and thumb, then swung the door open ad slid outside, her feet crunch in the deep snow. Kevin sat still for a moment, then quickly followed her. Holding her arm out, she slowly pivoted around, staring at the gently swinging ring. Kevin was bursting with questions, but by know knew enough not to interrupt. On Andrea's third turn, the ring stopped its slow swing, and suddenly began to spin in a small circle., like she was twirling it. Her hand was still motionless, though. Staring ahead, she memorized the few visible landmarks in the snow covered graveyard, them moved slowly ahead, wading through the deep snow. Kevin followed her closely, and the two were soon gasping for each breath. In between his pants, Kevin asked,

"Wow, that was crazy! What do you call that?"

"Dowsing. And before you ask, you can dowse for other things besides water.'

"Oh, okay."

Several minutes of fumbling around brought them to a slight mound. Careful digging with their gloved hands revealed the top of a headstone, but to their surprise, the lettering was in what Andrea thought was Japanese letters. Andrea stared down at it. She could feel something strange here, an emptiness. For some reason, she thought of the grave as the last fading few notes of an echo. It was just then she realized she had no real idea of how to conduct a seance. They couldn't sit around a table and hold hands, not out here in the snow. She would have to improvise again, and hope (pray?) she didn't screw up, big time.

"Kevin, take your gloves off, please."

"Oh, man. Are you going to cut me, again?"

"No, no, I just need our bare skin to touch. Now, stand facing me on the other side, but don't step on the grave, all right?"

"Don't worry about that! I'm not stepping on any dead guys , uh, you know!"

"Very smart of you. Now, be quiet, and no matter what you see, don't let go of me, okay?"

"Uh, sure, Andrea."

She thought deeply for a long minute, sighed, and spoke.

"I'm asking whoever might be hearing me, in this place, to communicate with us. People are dying, and it's something to do with Sandi Griffin, and whoever talked to her, here in this cemetery. Please, we'd like to help her, and the girls Tiffany Blum-Deckler, Stacy Rowe, Quinn and Daria Morgendorffer, and Jane Lane. I have reason to think they, and the city of Lawndale, are in grave danger. Please, if you are able to help us at all, or know anything that might, please, give us some sort of a sign."

At first, it seemed as if they had wasted their time. The only sounds were the hissing of the snow across the slowly shifting drifts. Then, a small funnel of snow stirred the snow covered mound between them. Kevin's eyes widened, but he steadfastly maintained his grip with Andrea, even though his hands felt like frozen rock. The tiny windstorm died away, leaving only a ruffled oval of snow on the mound. The snow kept moving, until it stopped, forming the likeness of a face. Eyes, nose, lips. When the eyes opened, Andrea felt as if the earth had opened under her feet.

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Stacy crawled into a small opening between the thickly packed piles of bones she had been tunneling through. Her vision wavered between the real world and the spirit world. She was grimly aware of the trail of sterile soil she was leaving behind her, of how just her touch was destroying any and all life forms around her The bones around her were slowly crumbling as well. Her bare skin was coated in mud, and the black rotting grease from the bones. Sheets of dark light, like a negative Aurora Borealis, played fitfully across her. Her eyes, if she had been able to see them, were empty pits, though an occasional spark would flare up and die in their depths, like a shooting star.

The cramped chamber was only dimly lit, but Stacy could see everything as though the sun was overhead. The jumble of human and animal bones was punctuated by the rounded domes of skulls. The chamber walls were thick with mold. Black, oily drops fell from the stalactites on the low ceiling. Stacy for a brief instant was almost childishly pleased she remembered that word. She trembled, still on her hands and knees in the loathsome muck. Her body felt heavy, almost leaden. Her lank hair hang down over her face. She wanted nothing else as much as to just collapse there for a precious few moments. Her mental and physical strengths had been pushed through the limits, and she felt like a hollow shell. Energy was flowing into her, but it weakened her as much as it helped her.

Stacy's mind fumbled with the opposites, the contradictions. Ice and fire, death and life. She vaguely realized that she was becoming something more then death.

Or less.

Undeath.

Such a simple word, so casually used. Stacy raised one hand to her face, staring at the still slender fingers. With just a touch, she knew she could kill anybody. Anybody at all. She was drowning in the tide of sensations. Along with the coldness radiating from the bones around her came feeling, flashes of life, not thoughts but pictures, each one exploding momentarily across her mind's eye. Hungry people, starving children. Their eyes were the worst, hungry eyes, while their hands withered into grasping claws.

Small villages with long low huts made of bark, brush and hides. Each one was buried deeply in the deep, drifting snow. A thin wisp of smoke escaped out a ragged opening in each roof, only to be ripped apart by the gusting wind, much as the tribe had been. Each year had been colder than the last, the spring and summers shorter. Less berries and nuts grew. The fish vanished from the rivers. The furred and feather game grew stunted, more wary, harder to hunt. Grey wolves, seldom a threat, now hunted men during the season's of cold and ice. Most of the old men and women of the tribe had died, but the ancient shaman told the survivors tales of how the world had its own seasons, of how man seasons ago the world had been colder, but then warmed again. The tribe had suffered then, too, but had prospered through the good times.

Now, food was so scarce, they had been forced to scatter out, breaking up into smaller clans, seldom seeing each other. They saved as much food as they could, drying meat and fish to last them through the cold times. Their lives revolved around the gathering and saving of food, all helping, the children gathering roots, nuts, and berries, the women hard at work preparing what to eat, saving the rest, tanning the skins that would become clothing, moccasins. The few hunters left meanwhile roamed farther and farther afield, searching desperately for the smallest of game. But now, they were afraid of the dark.

These were brave men. They had hunted bear and wolf, armed with only wooden spears, and stone knifes, hand crafted bows and arrows. But only a shaman could deal with spirits that dwelt in sky, land, and water. Several hunters had already disappeared, and that wasn't normal either. Deaths happened, accidents could slay the strongest and swiftest, game could turn, and attack the hunter. Life was harsh, and all knew it. But for a man to disappear completely?

Strange things would be whispered from empty sky, or the bare limbs of trees. Some of the strangest things would be heard from deep underground. A child might stray behind a small bush, and never again be seen, no matter how the mother would search. The small tracks would end abruptly, as if the child had been snatched away. But no bird known to them was that large.

Their shaman worked hard to protect them. But he was only one old man, though very wise. The spirits which helped men were weaker in the times of the ice and snow. The spirits which reigned now were pitiless, and hated all men.

Some of them had once been men or women themselves.

The hunter carefully approached the small grouping of huts. Smoke only drifted from one roof, even though there were at least six huts, with several families living there. His younger brother lived here. The deep snow around the huts had been trampled down into slush. Bones were scattered around, and all but one hut had been torn open. The hunters face remained impassive, but inwardly he shook. Gripping his axe and knife tightly, he moved toward the largest, central hut, the heart of the small village.

Bones and skulls had been woven into the brush around the hide flap covering the opening. The afternoon sky was darkening fast as he pushed his way into the hut. At first, his keen eyes saw nothing, only the small fire in the center. Then his blood froze, as he heard a low laugh.

"Come in, my brother, the feasting is rich!"

His brother grinned at him. He was sitting in the shadows on the other side of the small fire. The dim flame lit his features up in flashes, his swollen face. Even with the hide covering him, the hunter could see that his brothers joints had all swollen, twisted. In spite of the pain he must be feeling, his voice was relaxed, even humorous. A discarded pair of moccasins lay off to the side, split apart. He almost jumped at his brothers insane laugh.

"My feet burn, brother they burn like fire!"

His laughter shook the hides he was clothed in, and a jagged claw jutted out, scrapping the floor. He stared at the laughing man, and slowly backed out of the hut, his weapons grasped in shaking hands. It wasn't until he reached the cover of the thick forest that he turned and ran. His brothers wild laughter seemed to echo from the cloudless sky.

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The old man sat there quietly, staring at the small fire as the hunter finished his story. The flickering flames highlighted the deep wrinkles in his weathered face. He quietly stirred the glowing embers with a deers leg bone. His mind sifted the wisdom hard gained over his long life, his training by his own father and grandfather, the many secrets he had learned. He had journeyed many times in the spirit world, and had talked with many wise beings there. His own spirit animal huddled sleepily on his shoulders, unseen by all but himself. The little screech owl ruffled its feathers, clicking its beak.

"We must prepare for tonight. It will take strong medicine to fight that evil spirit."

"Are we going to attack it, grandfather?"

"No need, my grandson, it's hunger is deep and burning. It will come _here_."

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Angela Li regarded the school of Lawndale High as her personal fortress against a chaotic world, a place of discipline for ungrateful, spoiled children. She firmly believed that her sacrifices would never be appreciated but it was for the greater good. That was why she had instinctively bridled when the town mayor, Harry Smits, proposed that the school become a relief center for feeding townspeople left close to starving by the massive storm. The Cedars of Lawndale hospital was already packed with people, and the few city employees still able to work were scrounging diesel fuel for it's auxiliary generator.

They were also looking for food, but all of the big grocery stores, and the smaller convenience stores had already been stripped. Then a city council member remembered Angela Li's obsession with security for the high school, as well as the food supplies for the cafeteria. They discovered a gold mine.

The generator she had secretly installed was running the lights and heater for the school cafeteria. The few teachers and other staff members she had been able to contact had pulled the big mats from the gym into there for beds. Li's sullenness had been shattered by the people able to struggled into the school. She had seen refugees from natural disasters before, but these people were shell shocked. Several of the police and firefighters who had been trying to search for people, offering them warmth and food, had disappeared already. But where could they have gone? The city streets were close to impassible, even with four wheel drive, and the cities lone snowplow had been lost.

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Gus Wilson gunned the engine of the big truck as it crawled through the snow. The big blade bolted to the front end made slow going, even with the load of sand in the trucks dump bed. The old man had worked in the county roads department for close to thirty years, and he had never seen a storm as bad as this one. As he pushed grimly along the bypass road to the cities link with the Interstate highway, he wondered where on earth the state highway crews were. As warmly dressed as he was, the closer he got to the main storm surrounding the small city, the cold he got. His eyes flickered to the temperature gauge on his dashboard, and he grunted. The small needle was showing a pronounced swing to the far left of the gauge, even as his windshield sparkled with ice, despite his defroster running on high speed. Staring ahead, he swore and braked, the big truck's slow forward motion coming to a stop.

"Damn crazy people!"

He rolled the trucks window down with difficulty, sticking his head out, his breath a cloud of ice crystals.

"Hey, you! Uh, Miss? Are you all right? What the hell are you doing, walking around in this snow, barefoot? You'll freeze to death!"

The old man swung out of the truck, concerned. The young woman stood there demurely, her head down. Her shoulder length black hair hid her face. Gus noticed that the shoulders and chest of the girls light jacket was heavily stained dark red. Her slender hands were held to her face, as if she were crying. His mood softened. Had the poor kid survived a car accident or something?

"Uh, hey miss, are you all right? I can take you to the hospital. Here, lets get you in the truck, okay? You'll be okay, I promise you."

"No-o, I won't ev-er be ok-ay, no-ow, not ev-ver a-gain."

The girls voice was slurred, almost with a hiss. Each word was punctuated with an odd click. She extended her hands to him and raised her face, staring him in the eye.

Gus Wilson screamed, even as he understood.

It's hard to talk, without a face.


	39. Chapter 39

**Chapter Thirty-Nine**

Jane stumbled through the trees. Far ahead, a tree rose above the others in the dead forest. The closer she got to it, the higher it loomed, towering above her like a mountain. Jane, an East Coast girl who hadn't traveled much, (except for a disastrous family reunion in Texas) looked on in amazement as it blotted out the sky. Its limbs were bare, but a swirling black cloud buzzed around its base, reminding Jane of a swarm of flies. A hoarse cawing filled the dead air, and it wasn't until Jane got closer that she realized what was going on.

She paused, unwilling to enter the clearing that surrounded the mighty trunk. A vast cloud of crows flew around the tree. The branches around the base of the tree were filled with dangling, odd shaped objects. They were hard to make out through the screeching birds, but as Jane squinted her eyes, they became very clear. They were bodies, the bodies of men, women and children, and of animals of all sorts and sizes. One of the human bodies in particular was the bird's focus, however. It wasn't as old as the others. It had dirty, shoulder-length air. It wore modern clothing, white slacks, and bright red, casual pumps. A particularly vindictive crow perched on one shoulder, almost delicately picking at the corpses face. Jane stared at the scene in horrified fascination, poised to run if the birds decided to come after her.

Then the dangling legs feebly kicked, and Jane's stomach heaved. She stumbled back into the trees, her hands pressed against her ears. It wasn't Daria, she was sure of that. But, who was it? What should she do? Then her mind made a leap. The Fashion Club! It might be one of the missing girls!

Jane looked frantically around her for rocks or broken branches, any thing to beat those devilish birds away. Even now, though, she didn't have the nerve to break off a branch from one of the trees. Not finding anything on the ashy ground she could use, she swore silently, but slipped off her jacket. Her heart in her mouth, she slowly stepped out of the trees, eyes darting all around her, her jacket dangling in her hand. For one long moment, she was unnoticed.

Then a group of birds broke off the main flock, heading directly at her.

Surprising herself, she took the unexpected, and charged right at them, screaming. The flock exploded, scattering in all directions. Their shrill cawing took on a note of confusion, then abruptly everything became silent.

"You'd better run! Er, fly!"

After all the noise, the sudden silence engulfed Jane, smothering her. Looking ahead, she grew dizzy. The tree was still large, but no longer the titanic size she had thought it was earlier. The bodies still swung from the branches. A macabre collection of men, women, children, and of all types and sizes of animals. Tattered clothing of skins and greyed cloth fluttered in the faint breeze caused by the slight swing.

But Jane's eyes focused on the obviously modern body. It also swung slowly, revolving on its hide rope. Dirty brown hair, streaked with white and grey, flowed past its shoulders. Its fingertips were worn down to bloody stubs. Blood had stained the crotch and legs of the filthy white slacks. This was the corpse that had the bird picking at its face.

"Brown hair, must be either Sandi or Stacy, if she let her hair down."

Then the face and front swung into Jane's view, and Jane dropped to her hands and knees, gagging and vomiting, proving she was still alive in at least one respect. When she was done, she stared intently at the ashy ground, wishing she could forget what she had just seen. She doubted she ever would.

The only sound in the world was the creaking of the bodies on their ropes. Jane opened her eyes, but kept them firmly focused on the ash covered ground. A hoarse whisper came from above her, from something that Jane absolutely felt should not even remotely be able to speak.

"You've come."

"Sandi? Sandi Griffin? Is that you?"

A loud, agonized screaming was her only answer. Jane clapped her hands over her ears, in a childlike gesture as the scream went on and on, echoing in the clear sky. The raw agony pierced Jane to her core, images pounding into her mind. Sandi, Quinn, Stacy, Tiffany. The storm. Getting lost. Finding the cabin. Relief at finding shelter. Then the cold, the fear, the hunger.

Betrayal.

Murder.

Stacy's insanity. Sandi's attack on Quinn. Quinn staring down at Tiffany, before she knelt besides her and . . .

Her own scream echoed Sandi's for long minutes. Only the keen sense of time running out was able to yank Jane out of the ghastly vision, for the protection of her own sanity. She felt sorry for the torment the girl above her was feeling, but she just didn't have time for it.

"Sandi? Sandi! Damn you, stop that screaming!"

To her surprise, there was an abrupt silence as the screaming stopped. Jane's hearing still rung painfully, and it was only after some minutes that her hearing returned, that the utter silence of the dead world enshrouded her again. No, not total silence. There was still the faint creaking of the bodies swinging on their ropes, and Sandi's quiet sobbing.

"I am, like, you know."

Sandi's pathetic attempt, even here and now, at her "Valley Girl" dialect, told Jane at how much the tormented girl still clung to her charade of "coolness."

"What?"

"I'm damned, just like you said. Quinn is a monster, Stacy is a demon, and Tiffany is a monster, and it's all my fault."

"Sandi, what the hell did you do?"

"She promised me. She promised me! Mom would love me again! There is always a price, that's what she said. I thought it would be something like my soul. I didn't mind that, soul's are only good for after you're dead, right? But not my friends! Not their lives! They weren't a part of this! I, just wanted my momma to love me, please? Momma, I've always been a good girl. Haven't I always acted like you? Please?"

Sandi's screaming rant ended quietly, almost in a whisper. Her hands beat feebly at her sides, but she was unable to raise them. Jane stared helplessly upward. She gasped, the tree wavered in her vision, suddenly towering into the sky again. From living and vibrant, it suddenly died, leaves drying up, fluttering away across a cold, starry-covered sky. The living world's grasped in its branches trembled, growing colder, dryer, like rotting fruit. Jane's eyes were drawn to one in particular, and it swelled in her eyes, until she was able to see through the fluffy white clouds veiling the surface.

Of course.

Earth.

The living world pulsed in her mind, the currents of life flowing through the rocks and soil, the air and water. It's molten heart glowed, beating, the current's of magma flowing like blood. The constantly changing patterns of heat interacted with the world. Liquid water, unfrozen air, life forming, the world changed slowly, inexorably, the tapestry of life on a slowly moving loom. Various types of life would develop, live out their slowly moving life spans.

And then die.

The past flowed into the present, and then became the future. Three shadowy figures loomed behind the dead tree. Their glinting eyes pierced into Jane's own, forces the world had personified as three weavers. Urd, that which has become, Verdandi, that which is, and Skuld, what is to come. Jane sank to her knees, overcome, shuddering, but unable to look away. The vision trembled, the popped like a soap bubble, and once again she saw only Sandi's ravaged form, swinging gently in the sky. Jane shook her head, trying to match the present with the past.

A whisper snapped her out of her numbness.

"Daria."

"What? Sandi, what did you say?"

"Daria, of course, you're here for Daria. You know, I never really understood you two, you know?"

Jane stared upward, staring at the pitiful thing which had once been a teenaged girl.

"What do you mean, Sandi, what are you talking about? She's my friend, of course. I want to help her. If I can, I want to help you girls, too."

"Soul mates. I never really understood what that meant. Friends forever. Like I thought my mom was. I know it was never real, now, but I always wanted something like that."

Jane was stunned.

"You were jealous of us? You? Miss Popularity Queen of Lawndale High?"

"What good was any of it? I couldn't trust anybody. They couldn't trust me. Quinn and I liked each other, but we always fought. I made Stacy a nervous wreck, the sweetest, prettiest girl I'd ever met. And sure, Tiffany was wishy-washy, but did I ever really treat her right? Ever?"

"Sandi, why are you talking like this? I'm sorry for you and the others. But what happened? Who were those women? Where are you? Where's Daria?"

"It's the tree, you know, this tree. Don't you read your Bible, Jane? The Garden of Eden? The Trees in it? The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil? And the other tree?"

"The Tree of Life. But, I sure never imagined you ever being in a church, Sandi."

"Not since I was a little girl. Mom and dad would dress me up so pretty, and we'd go, and mom and dad loved each other, and called me their little princess. But then mom got busy at work, and so did dad. She had my brothers, but I had to spend all my time taking care of them, and mom was busy all the time. I couldn't play with the other kids, and they were such brats! It wasn't liked I thought it would it be at all."

Jane shook her head, and broke into Sandi's story.

"Sandi, I'm sorry about all that, I really am. But I can't do anything about any of that. Please, tell me where Daria is!"

Sandi was silent, sniffling like a little girl, and Jane was afraid she had shut her up permanently. But then Sandi sighed, and continued.

"The Snow Lady took her away, Stacy's Snow Lady. She took her so very far away, so very far away, inside of her. I can't see her anymore, even here."

"What in hell is the Snow Lady?"

"The Yuki-onna, she promised me she'd help me, she's so beautiful, but so sad, so lonely. She's just like me, like us, so alone, forever."

"She's a ghost? Sandi, what made you listen to her? How did you think some ghost would make your mother love you?"

"Shut up! Just shut up! She's magic, that's how! She's real magic, and she know's what things are like, when people let you down!"

"Damn it Sandi, focus! I can't help anybody when you just keep going on and on! I don't want to see anybody get hurt, not you, either! But you've got to help me too!"

"I, I'm sorry. Everything hurts so bad. I'm still alive, I think, but I'm stretched out all over. She lied to me, didn't she? They lied to her, too, but she doesn't know it yet. Everybody lies, everybody always has a plan, you know. Did you know I saw Tricia, Tricia Gupty? I wanted to kill her, I should have, but I didn't. See? I'm not so bad, I'm not a monster, not like the others."

"Sandi, please! How can I help stop all this?"

"Every bodies yelling at me! Everybody! I can see everybody, everything, all at once! But I can't do anything about any of it! Its this tree! It makes you see things, it makes you see everything. She stuck me up here on purpose, but she didn't tell me why! The other ones don't like it, that's why they sent the birds to hurt me!"

"What other ones? Sandi, please focus! Who are you talking about?"

"One of them's got Quinn! It's already made her murder people, eat people! She's screaming, crying, all broken, but she can't stop, it won't let her. It made her murder the Gupty's, Tad and Tricia's folks, she tore them apart with her bare hands! She's letting Tad and Tricia hear her eating them on purpose."

Jane grabbed her head with both hands, feeling like it was going to explode. She still didn't understand half of what was going on. Sandi Griffin, on the Tree of Knowledge? Jane really didn't believe she was in some warped version of the Garden of Eden. She had hardly had a religious upbringing. Daria could have told her a few things about older traditions, though. Pagan ones. About the ash tree, Yggdrasil, which was the center of the Universe in pagan Norse cosmology. She could have told Jane about the history of human sacrifice, of exchanging life for power and knowledge.

But Daria wasn't there. There was only Jane Lane, a mostly self taught artist who wanted to help the one person she had ever thought of as a real friend. Jane Lane, who had lost her home, seen Jake and Helen Morgendorffer's dead, frozen bodies, and held Daria in her arms as the life had left her body. Her best friend, forever gone?

"Sandi, listen to me. I need to know how all this started. I need to know how to fix things. You have to tell me. If this "Yuki-onna" is the center of all this, why here and now? Why Lawndale? Su-sa-o-no said I was his sword, that he had sinned. Quit letting things just sweep you along. You know things, maybe that's why you were put where you were, as horrible as things might be. "

"Hildskjalf."

"What?"

"The throne of heaven. Where you could see everything. The old man, the other one. He hung himself on the tree before me, on purpose. He sacrificed himself, to learn things, to learn magic. But everybody still died. No matter what he did, all of his friends and family still died. He sacrificed everything, and he still lost everything. The whole world died, fire and ice, born out of ice, burned by fire, everybody died."

"What old man , Sandi, who are you talking about?"

"The old man, he, he was like a wizard or something. His eye is so bright! He see's everything, and this is where he learned it. He's dead now, he's been dead for so long. But he want's something from me, from you. You have to finish things, Jane, you have to finish things, break things apart."

There was a long silence. Sandi stared down at Jane, and Jane had to bite her lip, but she met Sandi's stare. The hanging girls face was a mass of tattered skin, raw flesh and muscle showing. Her eyes were startling white against her exposed flesh. Did Sandi know what she looked like, feel the pain? Jane had little doubt that she felt it intensely.

"How can I finish things, Sandi? How can I stop all this?"

"Underneath me is a cave, a really deep cave, you have to go down there, and bring back a couple of things, some really old things."

"What kind of things, Sandi?"

"A drink of water, and one of those things they used to stick on poles, a spearhead."

"And what am I supposed to do with these things?"

"You kill me."


End file.
